Tales from Cyrodiil: The Cold Light of Day
by SickleYield
Summary: Second in a series about the darker characters of Cyrodiil. After his final defeat in the Arena, Agronak gro Malog is about to discover that death is not always the end. Now complete, though a sequel is likely.
1. Chapter 1

Tales from Cyrodiil: the Cold Light of Day

Author's notes: Welcome back, to those who read _TFC: A Dark Beginning. _I hope you enjoyed that, and I hope you'll enjoy this, too. This is not a sequel to that story, except insofar as it deals with the larger subject of a) vampires and other supernatural creatures and b) ways things could be different from their game incarnations. It may be considered to be in the same time period (just after the Main Quest) and in the same little split-off universe, in which the Hero of Kvatch performed only the Main Quest and the side quests have been done (or not done, or totally altered) by others.

The game lore never says what it technically means that the Gray Prince is half-vampire, except that he's unusually strong and agile for an Orc (hence the training he gives you if you perform the Crowhaven quest). Given this, I've taken some artistic license and just made things up. The same is true of Dremoras and their life cycle. I mod like crazy when playing the game, and I consider mod items or alterations fair game also as far as the fic is concerned.

On with the show...

Prologue

This is Agronak gro-Malog, the Gray Prince, the Arena Champion these ten years. He's not too tall, for an Orc. He's not so broad across the shoulders as you would expect. These facts have been fatally surprising to many an Arena hopeful. Agronak is stronger than he looks, and much, much faster. Oh, he's got a lot of scars, by this time. The road to Arena Championship is lined with other people, many of whom are holding sharp things.

This is the Gray Prince discovering his true origins through the dubious offices of a professional competitor, a wasp-quick and weasel-thin little Dunmer who calls himself the Black Arrow. Agronak stands with his sword in one hand and the old diary in the other, shaking with rage and shame as he realizes... He _is _the son of a nobleman, an Imperial of ancient blood. But Lord Lovidicus was a vampire. The Dunmer found him so crazed with solitude and bloodlust that he was forced to kill him. So runs the Dark Elf's tale, and Agronak has no reason to disbelieve him.

The Gray Prince is no longer able to think of himself as an Orc. He is a monster. And he will not live out his life as a creature, as something less than man or mer.

He teaches the Black Arrow some of what he knows, but his heart is not in it. He watches listlessly as the Dunmer climbs through the ranks, and accepts his final challenge with an eagerness which surprises those few who know him.

This is Agronak gro-Malog, begging for death on the sands of the Arena. The Black Arrow is happy to oblige. Afterward he is a little ashamed, but what does that matter? He is the Champion now, and it is him for whom the roaring crowd calls. Enough gold can pay for a lot of sleepless nights.

This is the corpse of the Gray Prince, stripped of armor and weapons, tossed into a shallow grave before the neat little hole in his chest has even stopped bleeding. He knew very few people in all his years here. Even fewer will think of him now that he is gone.

And this...

This is what happened to Agronak gro-Malog after that.

Chapter 1

Being born is hard enough the first time.

Most people of the various races of Cyrodiil are fortunate enough not to remember. One or two Argonians have been known to claim they remember their hatching, but they are generally suspected of being liars. Either way, the process is startling, painful, and protracted, not something a person would consciously wish to remember. Being born from a living womb is bad enough. Groping your way into the cold light of day from under the earth is much, much worse.

It was probably appropriate that a scream was the first sound Agronak gro-Malog heard. He opened his eyes and saw nothing but darkness, and took his first breath and got a nose full of dirt for his trouble. He flailed wildly, choking, and the weighty stuff gave way overhead. Agronak clawed his way up out of the ground, scrabbling for purchase. His questing fingers at last seized on handfuls of grass. He tugged, slipped, and finally got a grip. The Orc pulled himself out of the dark and into the dim sunrise of the month of Frostfall.

Agronak lay still for a moment, shivering as he gasped in air. It was cold in his lungs, chill against his bare skin. This wasn't right, surely? Wasn't there supposed to be another place after this one? A better place? _I've killed a lot of men and women. But.. I never struck from behind. I always let them get up again, if they could. I was a killer. Maybe I was a monster. I wasn't a murderer. _

_How long has it been, since I went to a temple altar? Since I left the Arena at all? I know I'm not in Oblivion. Oblivion is supposed to be hot._

Agronak shook his head, showering dust on the ground around him. He blinked to get it out of his eyes, and pushed himself up onto his knees. He'd heard something, when he was under the ground. _Someone screaming. It sounded like a woman. A girl._

That was something to grasp onto, at least. Agronak knew all about screaming. He lurched to his feet, shook himself again, and looked around him. He was just behind the line of sand on a long beach. A few wooden shacks stood nearby, and one or two ragged people were staggering between them. The grey stone wall of the Imperial City was visible some way off. _They buried me on the _Waterfront? _With the beggars? Divines, I'd have been washed out to sea the next time there was a storm._

"Rrngh," Agronak said, and shook his head again. Things were getting a little clearer, but they still weren't making sense. _I was dead. I know I was. What am I now?_

The girl screamed again, but the sound was quickly muffled, as if someone had their hand over her mouth. Agronak now recognized the harsh undertone in the sound: _She's a Khajiit. _He turned toward the shacks and set off in a stumbling run. After a few steps his gait leveled out, and the blood forcing itself through his brain made it a little easier to think. Not that it mattered much, right now. He knew what was happening. He'd seen it before.

The Khajiit was very small, no match for the hefty Imperial who had shoved her against the back wall of a tumbledown building. Her tail lashed, and she tried to scratch, but she couldn't get a grip. The man was trying to hold her muzzle shut with one arm around her neck as he unfastened his trousers with the other. He must have heard the running footsteps, because he said,

"Get out of here. This is none of your business."

Agronak had never had large hands, for an Orc. But after fifteen years fighting in the Arena, his knuckles were hard as stone. His fist hit the side of the man's head like a sack of rocks. The Imperial went down without a sound. The Khajiit sagged against the wall, panting. Tears stained the pale fur on her cheeks. Her eyes were yellow, bright as a bird's.

The Gray Prince waited. The man did not get up. After a moment, he nudged the Imperial with his foot. It was at this point that he realized the erstwhile rapist wasn't breathing. _I didn't think I hit him _that _hard. _The Khajiit girl must have realized it at almost the same time.

"You killed him," she said. Agronak, watching from the corner of his eye, saw her look at him closely for the first time. He must be a sight, practically naked and covered in dirt. _And pale, of course. Probably no other Orc on the continent is gray._

"Then you'd better run home, before somebody sees you," Agronak said. "Didn't your mother warn you about strange men?"

"She is always in the skooma. She knows nothing," The Khajiit said. "I will not tell anyone."

"Thanks," Agronak said.

"This one will not forget you," the girl said, and turned and ran.

Agronak watched her go. "You're probably the only one," he said quietly. Then he turned to look at the body. There was nothing to be done about the trousers, of course, but the man's tunic and coat looked to be in good shape. _Plain leather. It'd be better than being naked, and maybe it would take the Legionnaires a little longer to figure out who he was. _

Still, he hesitated. You never took things off a corpse in the Arena; it was against the rules. Hard practicality eventually won out over whatever vestigial gallant impulses an Arena Champion could be expected to possess. _I need them more than he does, _Agronak told himself, and hurriedly stripped the body of tunic, coat, and sandals. He found a nice purse and a dagger, too. _Some shopkeeper with nasty habits? Not that gold will do me much good right away. I can't be letting people see me, now that I'm dead._

He hid the body behind some barrels. The man was big, for an Imperial, but that didn't matter. Agronak was strong for his size. He always had been. _I should be, _he thought bitterly. _I'm half vampire. Maybe _all _vampire, now. If the Orc is dead, does the creature go on living? _Not for the first time, he cursed the never-seen but deeply loathed figure of Lord Lovidicus. _It's your vile blood that won't let me rest._

Agronak held the bundle of stolen goods under one arm as he turned to jog down to the sea. No one paid any attention to him. Most of them probably were skooma addicts, or just plain drunks. He kept going on into the water. It would be a long swim across the inlet, and the clothes would be wet. The way things were going, they'd have plenty of time to dry. At least he'd be cleaner when he got to the other side.

He dared not show his face inside the Imperial City. Everybody knew he was dead, and there was always the risk someone would recognize him. _The sun is coming up. Will I burn, I wonder? _

Part of the way across he paused, treading salty water. His free hand sought the notch on his left breast. It was closed, hardly more than a scar, but it was still there. A little awkward maneuvering let him find the matching mark on his back. _Straight through the heart with a steel longsword. Cleanest kill a man could ask for. But I can feel my heart beating, and I know I'm breathing, because I keep having to hold my breath when my head goes under. _He resumed swimming, trying to understand what this meant. His legs ached, after a while, but he was not tempted to stop. He remembered his death very clearly, and he really did not want to undergo the experience twice in the same day. _If that really happened yesterday. I've got no way to know how long I was under the ground._

He pressed on, keeping an eye out for slaughterfish. There were a lot of hungry people living on the Waterfront, which tended to keep the population down, but you never knew. Agronak did not look back toward the City. _The Arena has a new champion. Everyone there believes I'm dead. Let them go on believing it._

"Divines, why shouldn't they?" he muttered as the other shore at last loomed up out of the mist. "It's true."

The sun was well above the horizon when he dragged himself up onto the beach again. He got up, rinsed the dirt and salt out of his long hair in the first stream he found, and headed off toward the shadow of the trees. _I'm not on fire. I wonder if I should be glad or not. _The sun did hurt his eyes, something that had never happened in fifteen years of the Arena's glare, but he supposed that was to be expected.

It had been a long time since an ordinary enemy marched on the Imperial City, and any consideration of clearance had fallen behind long ago. The trees grew right up to the edge of the sand. Agronak waded on through the underbrush, occasionally wincing at the crack of a twig underfoot. _I'm going to have to learn how to go quietly, or I'm going to starve to death._

He really didn't want to think about what he was going to eat. Particularly since what he mostly felt, at this point, was thirsty.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Agronak walked for a long time. Later in the day a pheasant flew up in front of him, and he'd caught it before he knew what it was. He'd never learned how to make a fire without matches. He broke its neck, plucked it as best he could, and ate most of it raw. It tasted terrible, and it seemed to vanish the instant it hit his stomach, but it was better than nothing. _And I will starve to death before I'll kill something just to drink its blood._

The moment when he realized he would have to drink its blood _before _he killed it was considerably worse. He sat on a log for a while, sunk in something like despair, but that couldn't last. He'd been through it once already. And he'd known then, and he knew now, that he couldn't kill himself. _Ha. Let that little rat of a Dunmer do it for me. Well, I'm _not _going to go through that again. I'll... I'll get used to this. I will. I know I'm a monster, and I knew it before. At least I will do no harm to real people. It's probably worth a few rabbits and pheasants, for that._

_I guess it will have to do._

Agronak got up, brushed himself off, and walked on.

Sometime the next day he caught another fat bird. He saw deer, but he doubted he could kill one with a belt knife. This time he cut the feathery creature's head off and poured some of its blood down his throat before its heart stopped beating. It tasted worse than he'd expected, but he didn't gag. And the gnawing thirst dwindled a little. Agronak knew almost nothing about woodcraft, but he was not a squeamish man. You didn't last long in the Arena if you were. _Wish I had some ale. Maybe I'll run across a farm and see if they'll sell me some, once I get far enough away from the City. _For now, he rinsed his mouth out in the first small rivulet he found. He cut off half the thong from his new purse and used it to bind back his hair. He looked at his reflection. It seemed the same as it had always been. Maybe he was yet a little paler than before. _Still a Gray Something, anyway. _He did not check to see if his canine teeth were sharper. He didn't want to know. The tusks in his lower jaw looked exactly the same, worn short by constant battering.

He tried not to think about his mother. _I think she always _was _afraid I'd turn out like Lovidicus. It's why she ran away from him, and it's why she didn't tell me about him until she knew she was dying. At least she was proud of me for a while. She didn't care that I killed people for a living, as long as it was according to the rules._

The Arena was a harsh sort of life, but it was structured. It had its regulations and its hierarchy. And if you lived long enough to get good at it, it paid reasonably well. Of course, in the normal order of things, somebody was going to get you sooner or later. You got older. Your knees got bad. Your back started to give. That was when you got into another line of work, or you got killed. _I wonder how long I would have lasted. Would I have gotten old? Or would I have gone on being thirty for another ten years, until old Owyn started to wonder why I looked so young? Would they have chased me out with torches, in the end?_

On sunrise of the third day, he stepped out of the trees and onto a rocky hillside. Agronak knew the sun came up in the East, but unless it was sunrise or sunset, he had no idea how you were supposed to divine a direction from that. The fact that he couldn't look at the sky without his eyes stinging also militated against any notion of finding out that way. He had a hazy idea that you were supposed to be able to tell from the stars, but he had no idea how that worked. The only stars he knew where the ones in the little circle of sky above the pit, and he'd never had much time to look at those. The upshot of this was that he absolutely no idea where he was. _I must have covered forty miles, at least. I know even less geography than I do woodcraft, _he thought sadly_. I wore the Bloodworks like a skin, and I could find you every tiny bump in the stones under the sand in that Arena. But I never went more than two streets away from it from the day I turned fifteen._

The world inside the Imperial City was a small one, a crowded one, a busy one. Now he was out in the rest of the world all by himself. He hadn't seen another person in almost three days, and not spoken to anyone since the few words he'd exchanged with the Khajiit. Agronak was startled to find himself more than a little lonely as he started to climb the hill.

As he neared the top, he saw a column of smoke rising off to his right. He slowed down, but it never occurred to him not to go and look. If somebody was around who wanted to kill him, they could find him easily enough. Any peasant you could find out here would be better at tracking than Agronak gro-Malog was at covering his tracks. He might as well see what was going on.

The Gray Prince topped the hill and stood there, staring. He knew what he was looking at, though he'd never seen one before. _That has to be what's left of a gate to Oblivion._

He knew about the Hero of Kvatch, because everyone knew about that, even down in the Bloodworks. He didn't really know about the Emperor, except some vague intimation of important things happening very far away from his dim and sanguinary little world. He had no idea that every gate everywhere in Cyrodiil had closed at the same time. All he knew was that he stood looking at a pair of broken stone columns and a burnt patch of earth, and all around it lay bodies in armor. Small fires burned here and there, but the grass was too green. They were already dying down.

A puff of breeze carried the stink of burning and of death to his nostrils. Agronak started slowly down the hill, looking around him for survivors. About half the bodies he saw seemed to be humans, stocky men clad in the armor of the Imperial Legion. (Perhaps it was legal for other than humans to join that service, but he'd never met a nonhuman Legionnaire.) Even in battered and blood-soaked armor, the insignia were unmistakable.

The other half...

"Divines," Agronak said. The other half were demons. They were covered head-to-toe in jagged black and red armor, and some wore robes, but there was no mistake. Some had no helmets, and Agronak saw the little horns perched on broken skulls. Their skin came in different shades, and some had black hair and some had dark shades of red and brown, but all had flesh mottled like melting stone. Black on purple, black on red. There was variety among them, but all had full lips, often bitten and torn. Long downturned noses, bent oddly by blows from maces. Cheekbones sharp as spines, white bone laid open to the sky. Flies were gathering. If he glanced up, he could see the crows circling overhead.

The smell of blood was easily distinguished under the fecal stench of violent death. Agronak tried to ignore that as he picked his way among the dead. _Twelve demons, and twenty Legionnaires, and one closed gate. They must have been attacking through the gate. Then it closed, and their retreat was cut off. They were outnumbered, and it looks like they still killed every single one of their enemies. Arkay, that must have been some fight. Maybe there were survivors and they ran off._

"Is anyone here?" Agronak said, raising his voice to be heard over the desultory crackle of the flames. The sound echoed back from the hillside, but no one answered. "Is anyone alive?"

Something went _clank _over behind a column. Agronak turned that way, going carefully to avoid tripping over an outflung leg or a severed arm. It seemed strange to see so many dead bodies in one place. _Sure. I'm used to just one or two, or maybe three, if I've done something to annoy Owyn and he can come up with the volunteers._ Agronak felt a small pang for the ebony sword he'd carried for so long, but he pushed it away again. _No going back. Go forward._

He went forward. As he started around the column, an arrow zipped past his ear. Agronak dropped and rolled neatly backward. He came to his feet with his knife in his hand.

"Begone, Mortal," said a voice. It was unlike any voice he'd ever heard. There was a strange harmonic to it, a distortion, as if two people were speaking and one of them were inside a steel drum. It grated on the ear like iron scraping iron.

"That's no way to talk," Agronak said, and edged around again, staying low. No arrow was forthcoming. He poked his head cautiously around the column, then jerked it back again. Nothing. He'd caught a glimpse of one of the demons, sitting slumped against the column. Alone. _Maybe. _He eased around the column in the other direction, listening. He heard no other voices, no telltale footstep, and there would be no going silently in the heavy black-and-red boots of the demon army. _What do they _make _that armor out of, anyway? It's not steel. It's not iron. Iron doesn't glow red at the edges, no matter how many mages have tinkered with it. _

_But some of the ones in robes were barefoot. _Agronak went very carefully as he crept around the hulk of broken stone. The demon had not moved. It still sat with its back to the column. A quiver lay on the ground beside it, and one blotchy hand clutched a single arrow. A faint ochre steam rising from its other hand was all that remained of the bow. _Ah hah. You can only keep a conjured weapon for so long. That's why I never used them._

"Run out of magicka, have you?" Agronak said. He squatted a few yards away, watching. The demon rolled its head weakly to follow him. Its eyes were red. Not red like a Dunmer's, but red all the way through. The web of dark lines that crisscrossed it might have a pupil in it somewhere, but it was impossible to distinguish.

Three iron arrows protruded from the side seam of the demon's breastplate. Blood ran down the outside in a thin stream. Agronak cocked his head as he looked at it. "You bleed red," he said. "I didn't expect that of a demon."

"Begone, and let me die in peace," the creature snarled. Its lips were a little thinner than some of the others, but it sneered extremely well. Agronak gro-Malog had met very few people who could look down their noses at him while technically looking up (and fewer who would dare try it). Admittedly, the demon had a certain natural advantage. That beak of a nose was admirably suited to the purpose.

"And you speak Imperial, too," Agronak said. "Does everybody speak Imperial in Hell?"

"Of course not," said the demon. Its grip started to loosen, and it quickly tightened its fingers around the arrow again.

"Do people really go to Oblivion when they die, then?" Agronak said. "Is that how you learned?"

The demon snorted. "Oblivion is where mortals go just _before _they die, man of Nirn."

"I'm not a man," Agronak said.

"It does not matter. Go away."

"You're awfully talkative, for someone who's dying," Agronak said. "I'll bet if we did something about those arrows, you'd have a decent chance. You're not wheezing, so none of them hit your lungs."

Disdainful eyes took in his leather clothing and the plain knife. He watched them linger on his face, where the scarring was most visible around his eyes. "And how do you come to know that, man of Nirn?"

"I fought in the Arena for fifteen years, Orc and boy," said the Gray Prince. "If it comes to that, I've been shot a few times myself." He tugged the neck of his tunic sideways, showing the pair of star-shaped scars next to his left collarbone. "People would come watch me practice just to see where the chinks in my armor were."

"What is an Arena?" the demon said.

"That's where people pay to watch other people fight," Agronak said. The demon shot him a look of blank incomprehension. "But then, I guess everybody fights all the time, where you come from. That's what the mages say."

"Mages," the demon said, and spat out something in another language. Agronak didn't need a translation. He could guess.

_Right. This is a... Dremora, was it? I think I had one summoned on me, once. Not that I didn't kill the poor idiot magician anyway. The problem with summoning is that as soon as somebody figures out they just have to get to _you, _you've had it. _

"So you've been summoned before?" Agronak said. The Dremora snarled wordlessly. "So why worry? Won't you just disappear and end up back in Oblivion, if you die?"

"_If _I were summoned here," the demon said. "We came through the gate." It gestured weakly at the battlefield. "The plane to which these have gone is beyond all reach of Kyn or Welkyn."

"I could take care of those arrows, you know," Agronak said. "I've got some lavender. It'll heal up fairly quickly."

"The arrows are not the problem, fool," the Dremora said, and edged slightly to one side so that he could see its left leg. Agronak looked at the dented ruin of its armor. _Whatever's under that has got to be broken in more than one place_. Blood had leaked out at the seams, matting the grass under it.

"Mace?" he said.

"Yes," the demon said. Agronak thought quickly. _I've set a leg before. I could do it again. It might not heal straight, but it'd be better than dying._

"Not so bad," Agronak said. "You might limp, but I think we can fix it."

"Why?" the Dremora said, eyeing him narrowly.

Agronak opened his mouth, then closed it. _It's from another place. It doesn't know the difference between an Orc and a human. It probably has no idea what vampires are. For that matter, it might not even know what _lonely _means._

"I don't have any pressing engagements just now," Agronak gro-Malog said. "Do you?"


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

_A/N: Dremoras don't seem to speak a separate language in the game, except in the names and ranks they use. This is another area where I'm making things up. Some of them sound sort of Hebraic, so I've used a phonetic rendering of a Biblical name as well. It means "not my people," which seems appropriate enough._

The last kynval of the Citadel of Natural Disaster sat against a broken pillar and wondered. She was in more than a little pain, from the arrows and her crushed left leg, but that did not matter. A Dremora who cannot retain the ability to think rationally when suffering is unlikely to survive to adulthood. The kynval was much older than she looked.

She watched through half-lidded eyes as the mortal tried to keep a fire going long enough to heat water in a bent breastplate. It was obviously very bad at it. If there had not already been fires going nearby, she doubted it could have started one at all. She supposed, upon further consideration, that the creature was male. (Why had he denied that, earlier?) Most mortal creatures were proportioned somewhat like Dremoras, and his shoulders were broader than his hips.

He also seemed stupider than the average. He'd let her keep her arrow. The kynval might have been inclined to dismiss him altogether, except that she had watched him bend a steel breastplate into a dish with his bare hands. Then he'd bent part of a greave into a long, straight rod, she assumed with the intent of using it as a splint. Now she waited, curious to see what this mad being planned to do next.

He took some sprigs of a plant out of his belt pouch and dropped them into the steaming water. He dropped in a rag of cloth he'd found as well. Then he came and squatted in front of the kynval.

"That greave will have to come off," he said.

"I cannot reach it," the kynval said.

"I see that," the mortal said. "The question is whether you're going to stab me behind the ear when I try to unbuckle it."

The kynval blinked at him, startled. Then she smiled. "Perhaps you are not as stupid as I supposed," she said. She picked up the arrow and tossed it easily out of reach. "I could still break your neck with my hands, if I were not so weak."

"I'll bet you could," the mortal said. He smiled back, a grim twitch of the lips. The kynval took note of what appeared to be fangs. She was fairly certain mortals weren't supposed to have those. "This is going to hurt."

The kynval did not dignify this with a response.

She woke up a few minutes later, snarling. There was a moment's furious disorientation, and then pain brought back memory. The kynval shook her head. Her leg still hurt, but the pain was less. The mortal had been trying to put it back together, and then he'd taken a piece of bone that was sticking out and shoved it back in, and then she'd lost track of her surroundings...

She looked around. The mortal knelt next to the makeshift basin, rinsing a bloody rag in the hot water. A tail of black hair slid forward over his shoulder. It seemed odd, given that the top of his head was bald, but the kynval had no basis for believing it was not normal.

"Do you always wake up that way?" the mortal said.

"When I wake up," the kynval said.

"Sorry, I don't understand."

The kynval looked down at her leg. It was now strapped into the half a greave, and it was relatively straight. Her flesh did seem to be closed around the bones. _I must remember this plant, and discover where to find it. There are no fountains of blood here._

"I do not normally..." the kynval sought a disused word. "Sleep?"

"What, never?" the man said.

"Unless the _krynvelhat _sorcerers force me," the kynval said.

"What does – never mind, I can guess. Is this all Dremoras, or just you?"

"Most," the kynval said.

"Well, you've lost a fair amount of blood. It's not surprising. I'll have to have that breastplate off if I'm going to get the arrows out."

The kynval growled reflexively, then stopped herself. _It is doubtful whether he even realizes what he is saying. _She looked around, but her arrow was still out of reach. She looked down at her right side, selected the arrow with the most shaft showing, and yanked it out. She hissed at the pain as blood began to flow more freely.

"I will let you remove the others," she said, when she could speak.

"Fair enough," the man said. He came slowly and knelt beside her. She watched narrowly as he unbuckled the breastplate on one side, then the other. It was arguably the closest she'd been to a mortal creature. She wondered if all of them were so ugly. The skin on his bare arms had an appropriate number of scars, but it was far too pale and uniform.

She did not make a sound as he pulled the breastplate off, though blows had deformed it in many places. She wore only a few turns of fabric around her chest underneath it. He blinked, but did not stare for more than a second. All told, there wasn't much to see. The rations that a midranking archer from the Citadel could expect didn't allow for enough body fat to support it.

"You're a woman?" he said.

"The previous remark I made, regarding your intelligence," the kynval said. "I withdraw it."

"I see. Try and hold still, will you?"

The kynval sniffed disdainfully. She did not lose consciousness as he removed the arrows, but it was a near thing. Afterward she lay slumped against the pillar, breathing silently. The mortal dabbed lightly at the wounds with the rag. The bleeding stopped as if by magic. It probably _was _magic, of the kind plants held in their bodies. Hadn't she dipped her own arrows in harrada before almost every battle in her life?

"So did you run into the Legionnaire with the mace before or after you were shot three times?" the man said.

"Why do you care, man of Nirn?"

"Just curious," the man said. "And I'm an Orc." He avoided her eyes. The kynval took note of this without understanding it. Shame was not something with which she was very familiar. "Half-Orc."

"It was after," the kynval said. "We two were the last standing. I believe I left my dagger in his neck."

"I'll go look for it later," the Orc said. "You have a name?"

The kynval looked at him suspiciously. There were magics a filthy _krynvelhat _could do that required the use of a name. She doubted seriously whether this – Orc? - knew any of them. "LoAmai," she said.

"My name is Agronak," the Orc said. "I suspect someone will come to see what happened to this company of Legionnaires sooner or later. I'll have to move you."

"And how will you do that, Orc?" LoAmai said. "I am still wearing sixty pounds of armor, and I assure you I _will _stab you in the ear if you attempt to remove my greaves."

"I'm going to carry you," he said. "_With _your permission."

"You will drop me," the Dremora said.

The Orc rolled his eyes – they were an odd color, very pale – and slid an arm under her shoulders and one under her knees. Then he picked her up as if she weighed nothing at all. The kynval lay against his shoulder, observing her splinted leg sticking comically out into the air. His skin seemed cold, but that was common to mortals. LoAmai did not let go of her arrow.

"I wonder if you're running a fever," Agronak said. "That would certainly explain some things."

"My blood is warmer than yours," LoAmai said. "It is too cold on this plane."

"It's Frostfall," Agronak said. "It's warmer at other times of the year. You don't have seasons in Oblivion, do you?"

"I do not know the word _seasons_."

"I thought not. Do you know the words _thank you?_"

"No."

"I should've known better than to ask."

---

Agronak carried the wounded Dremora half a mile from the battlefield and into a copse of trees.

He propped her up against a trunk, half-hidden by the roots. She allowed him to drape his leather coat around her shoulders. He'd had to cut off the sleeves, since they wouldn't fit over his arms, but it would be better than nothing. "I'm going back and put out the fire," he said. "I'll see if I can find that knife, too. Try not to make any noise."

The Dremora raised a black eyebrow and said nothing. Agronak shrugged and went. He had trouble thinking of LoAmai as female. _Maybe it doesn't make such a difference to demons, or... What was the word I heard that mage say? Daedra? A fancy word for fancy people. Not for me._

_I wonder if I've actually gone crazy, _he thought as he jogged back toward the ruined gate. _Dremoras are evil, right? I remember that much. What are the Legion going to do to me, if anybody catches me helping one?_

_Probably nothing worse than they'd do when they realize what I am, _he concluded grimly. _Maybe I can find a robe and a hood without too many stains on it, keep her face out of sight. Not that that nose won't stick out. _She wasn't ugly, exactly. Just... Alien. Agronak had seen enough women of various races to grasp what was attractive in an Elf, or an Argonian, or a Khajiit. What _did _Dremora look for? Particularly sharp horns? Especially ragged black hair? She'd had all of that, right enough. _Must not be any percentage in being soft, either. It was like holding onto a board. _He understood that. He'd fought women in the Arena more than a few times, after all.

_She's right, you know. I really am doing a very stupid thing. Odds are good that the second she can walk again, she'll kill me in my sleep._

He wasn't alone any more. That was worth something, at least.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The last kynval sat against a tree trunk and waited. She was curious as to whether the Orc actually intended to come back or not. But then, there were plenty of reasons for him to do what he had done. Just how far _was _the gate from the nearest dwelling? _It did not take him long to carry me here. Unencumbered, he will be able to run very swiftly._

But then, if he really intended to hand her over to the men in steel armor, why had he moved her at all?

_To place me further from the weapons, _the kynval decided after a moment's thought. _He does not wish me to find a bow or a knife while he is gone._

Something went _snap _a few yards away. LoAmai turned her head slowly. There were bushes in the way, interfering with her view of whatever-it-was. This plane had considerably more vegetation than Oblivion. _At least there are no daedroths here._

She could feel her magicka building back, but it was not enough yet. It would still be some time before she could summon her bow again. LoAmai adjusted her grip on her single arrow. The bushes moved slightly, and she caught a glimpse of a patch of tawny hide, like a clannfear inexplicably covered in fur. _I did not hear it until it was mere feet from me. That is easily within leap for a clannfear. Perhaps it is for this animal also._

The mountain lion shifted softly from foot to foot. Then it pounced.

---

Agronak gro-Malog heard the snarling from a long way off. Further, in fact, than an Orc probably should be able to hear. He didn't think about this at the time. He was busy running.

By the time he found the oak with the knobbled roots, it was all over. He stood for a moment, staring down at the body of the lion that covered the body of the Dremora. Neither one moved. _I should have known better, _Agronak thought, and then the smell of blood hit his nostrils and he quickly turned his back, fighting with himself. It had been a long time since the pheasant. He'd been able to ignore it before, in the variegated stench of a battlefield. The daedric dagger dropped from his suddenly weak fingers and stuck in the ground with a _thud. _It had been a long time since he'd slept as well...

"If you have no use for that dagger, I assure you that _I _have," said LoAmai. Agronak turned to see the Dremora trying futilely to shove the two-hundred-pound animal off her chest. Agronak blinked as he reevaluated rapidly. Then he gritted his teeth against the smell, seized the mountain lion around the middle, and hauled it off to one side.

"What were you doing?" he said.

"Having a drink, fool," the Dremora said. "Which is very difficult with only an arrow."

"What?" He looked back at the lion's body. Its only wound appeared to be a ragged hole in the side of its neck. He looked back at LoAmai in turn to see her wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. The other hand still clutched the arrow in question. _It keeps getting gorier all the time. _"You were drinking its blood?"

She looked at him with raised eyebrows. "Of course," she said. "It will not flow freely if you wait for it to congeal. You will have to cut it elsewhere if you want any."

"I don't want it," Agronak said. He picked up the knife and offered it to her handle-first. The Dremora dropped the arrow and seized the dagger in one smooth motion. Agronak twitched backwards.

"So mortals can lie," LoAmai said.

"Some of us are very good at it," Agronak said. He crouched in front of her at a safe distance. _Unless she decided to throw the knife. But then, she knows and I know that I could dodge it._

"Then you have some way to go, Orc of Nirn. Those teeth are not for eating grass."

"All Orcs don't have them," Agronak said. He resisted an urge to look away as he said it. Something about the very comfortable way LoAmai was holding the dagger suggested that turning his back on a Dremora was a bad idea. _Even a wounded one. _"I'm half vampire."

"What is a vampire?"

"An Undead that drinks the blood of the living," Agronak said. "My father was one."

"Only the living?" LoAmai said.

"I'm afraid so."

"This is why you saved my life?" she said.

Agronak jerked upright, revolted. "What? No!" He took a step back. "Never." Some part of his mind noted that she hadn't sounded angry, merely curious. _Matter-of-fact._

"Then why?" she demanded, shoving herself back against the tree trunk. If this caused further pain in her splinted leg, she gave no sign. Her free hand casually brushed a wisp of dark hair off her face. Her skin was somewhere between red and brown under its black mottlings. Again, it wasn't necessarily ugly, but it was distinct from every race Agronak knew.

Agronak sighed. He rubbed his eyes with one hand. "Mortals can lie, remember?"

"Yes, but now I know that you are singularly inept at it," LoAmai said. "Will you sell me to a _krynv_ – to a mage? I imagine you could find one who would pay well for an unsummoned daedra."

"Even if I were willing to do that, which I'm not, there would be too much risk of becoming a prisoner myself," Agronak said. "I can defend myself against destruction magic. I'm fairly bad with illusion."

"And such a one would like to own a half-Undead also," the Dremora said.

"Since we'd be talking about a necromancer, yes."

"Yet you are alive," said LoAmai. "I can see you breathing."

"I'm not sure what I am," said Agronak gro-Malog. "I've never heard of it happening before. Orcs and Imperials, yes. Orcs and vampires... Who'd think it possible?"

The Dremora shrugged. "The races of Oblivion seldom interbreed," she said.

"No, I can see where they wouldn't," Agronak said. "Atronachs come from there, right? Are you finished with this mountain lion?"

"Yes, they do," LoAmai said. "And yes, I am. What will you do with it?"

"Skin it out," Agronak said. "Since we left your breastplate back there on the battlefield, you're going to need some kind of tunic. It'll be colder yet before winter is over, even if there's no snow down here in the lowlands."

The Dremora curled her lip. "Colder than _this?"_

"That's right," Agronak said, and seized the dead lion by the scruff. It seemed heavier, suddenly. "Er. I don't suppose you know anything about tanning?"

---

The kynval watched with mild amusement as the Orc Agronak went about the business of tanning the lion's hide with the hair still on it. She gave instructions curtly, and he followed them mostly accurately. The only real problem was when they encountered the necessity of a tanning agent. Since bloodgrass obviously wasn't available, the Orc had to start another fire (this time on his own – _starting _fires wasn't usually the problem, in Oblivion) and boil water. Then he collected snippets of bark from every tree he could find until one made the water change color. Not long after, the rolled hide was sitting in a bent breastplate full of steaming tannin.

"Now what?" Agronak said. He fingered a new stain on his leather tunic, more an idle gesture than anything else.

"It will not be finished for many hours," LoAmai said. "Then it will have to be stretched and dried."

"Do you want something else to sit on?"

The tree was cold against her back, but sitting up off the ground would be colder. "No."

The Orc dragged a log over to the opposite side of the fire and sat down. He rubbed his eyes again. They were red around the edges, which LoAmai was not sure was normal. Both of them said nothing for a long time. The pale sun dragged past overhead, visible dimly through the branches and the scant leaves. The roots of LoAmai's horns stung with the chill. She pulled the Orc's coat unobtrusively closer around her.

"What did you do with the rest of the lion?" LoAmai said eventually.

"I threw it down a ravine," Agronak said.

"Will you hunt for yourself soon, mortal Orc?"

The Orc chuckled deep in his chest. He had a strange half-voice, like all mortals, but it was not an unpleasant sound. "I've spent far too much effort trying to keep you alive for you to get eaten by something now," he said. "And there may be more than lions out here. I've never been out in the woods before."

"This is not difficult to believe," LoAmai said.

Agronak used that odd pair of words again. "_Thank you _very much. I suppose I'm fortunate I ran across a badly wounded demon to keep me from starving or freezing to death out here."

"Either of those is still possible," LoAmai said.  
"You know, the more we discuss these things, the more I wonder how you ever survived in Oblivion," he said dryly. "What with everyone you know trying to kill you every time you opened your mouth."

The kynval showed her teeth in something that might charitably be called a smile. "Simple. Many things in Oblivion are easier to kill than I am."

"I'd call that bravado," Agronak said. "Except that you apparently just killed a mountain lion with nothing but an arrow despite having a broken leg. Makes me wonder how we won."

"I was only a kynval," LoAmai said. "I would not know."

More time passed. After a while Agronak said, "You keep calling me _mortal. _Does that mean you don't age?"

"If I understand the word you use, no," LoAmai said. "I do not."

"So how old are you?"

"Three thousand souls," LoAmai said promptly. "Give or take perhaps a hundred. The count is not always exact in battle."

The Orc poked at the embers of the fire with a stick to keep them from going out. "You don't count years?"

"I do not know them," she said. "It is said that the citadel lords have a way of keeping time. If so, they would not tell it to footsoldiers." She stopped, thinking of Lord Mahershalal. _He is dead now. I saw him fall. _She would not grieve, exactly. He'd caused her too much discomfort over her lifetime for that. But it was an end to the order of things as she understood it. _Those who remained behind will be without a leader. They will fight among themselves. Another lord will rule them, or wipe them out and replace them with his own offspring. Others will drink from our fountains and walk the halls we knew._

"Is something wrong?" Agronak said.

"No," LoAmai said. "How old are you?"

"Thirty years old, when I died," he said. "That was maybe three days ago."

"Mortals die only once," LoAmai said.

"That's right," Agronak said. He smiled in an odd way. Sadness was another thing with which the kynval was not very familiar. "Whatever I am now, my mortal life is over." The smile widened, and changed. "I guess you can always keep calling me _fool_."

"Particularly if you allow the fire to go out," LoAmai said. The Orc rolled his eyes again.

"Right. I'll see if I can find some more wood."

---

"The sun is going down," Agronak said, some time later.

The kynval glanced sidelong at the West, trying not to look directly at the painful glare between the trees. "It will be dark?" she said.

"That's right," Agronak said. He picked up a large log and wedged it carefully into the fire. He stumbled slightly as he did it, the first sign of physical weakness she'd seen. He was a fast learner, LoAmai admitted silently. Perhaps she ought to be watching him more closely. "And it's looking cloudy. If we're lucky, it won't rain, but it's likely to get colder."

_Lucky _was another word LoAmai didn't quite remember, but she judged from his tone that it wasn't something she was likely to be. She knew _rain_. Even in Oblivion, things sometimes fall from the sky. Not water, as it happened, but at least the concept was familiar.

"So." Agronak came and squatted in front of her. His heels had left an indentation the last time, and he put his feet in exactly the same place without looking. _A very fast learner. _"I'm going to go to sleep, because I haven't slept in about three days. I'd just as soon stay awake, given that you're a demon, but I have the feeling I'm going to fall over more or less soon anyway. And I plan to do it sitting next to you."

"Indeed," LoAmai said. "And why should I permit this?"

"Because it will decrease the chance that you'll freeze to death tonight," Agronak said. "I may not be as warm as you are, but I'm plenty warmer than that tree."

"That is so," she said. "And how do you know I will not kill you while you sleep?"

"Same reason," Agronak said. "Besides, you'd run out of wood in a few hours. Your leg's still broken. I've given you my coat, but you'll notice I haven't made you a crutch yet."

LoAmai laughed briefly. "So you have not. Then sit here, Agronak the Orc." She slid as far to one side as the knobby roots allowed. The Orc hitched his dagger sheath around to the opposite side, then came slowly forward and sat down beside her with his back to the tree. They sat there, shoulder to shoulder.

"You are not so very much warmer than the tree," LoAmai said.

"Well," Agronak said. "You are. If you survive, it's more or less guaranteed that I will. Supposing you don't stab me, of course."

"Supposing that, yes," the kynval said.

The Orc shifted position slightly so that he could rest his head against a knob on the bark of the tree. He closed his eyes. The kynval, her right arm necessarily pressed against his left, felt his breathing grow shallower.

Then he stopped breathing at all.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

LoAmai sat still for a long time. Eventually, she concluded that Agronak was not holding his breath. She raised her arm awkwardly and pressed her fingers into his neck. Nothing. She considered this. She knew nothing at all about what it took for a mor – for an Orc to freeze to death, but she'd had the impression it wouldn't happen quite that quickly.

She waited a while longer. There was no question about it. Agronak was dead.

LoAmai growled under her breath, assessing her chances. It was completely dark now, darker than the half-light of her home plane. The temperature was still falling, and she felt the body cooling beside her. The fire would go on for some time. She would last longer after it went out if she had something to insulate her from the cold, and there was neither blanket nor coat to be had beyond what she already wore. She could try to strip Agronak, but the effort would be great and the difference meager.

The kynval scooted down further against the trunk. Her wounded leg stung painfully with the cold and the movement. She ignored it. LoAmai twisted around as best she could, reached over with both arms, and pulled the Orc's body over hers. A cold tusk scraped down her cheek as the corpse's head fell back against her shoulder.

_It will be a long time until the morning._

_---_

Agronak woke up when the sun hit his eyelids. It seemed to burn right through to the back of his skull. He shook his head, trying to turn away from the pitiless light of day -

And was violently shoved forward. Agronak rolled to his feet, reaching for his dagger. It was gone. He stood with the East at his back, squinting. LoAmai sat against the tree trunk with a knife in each hand.

"You changed your mind a little late," Agronak said.

She lowered the daggers slowly, staring at him as if he'd just leaped out of the ground. Then she flipped the steel knife into the ground at his feet. "I did not expect you to move," she said.

"Why not?" Agronak said. _I wonder why I'm not cold. _In fact, he was almost uncomfortably warm, as if he'd been sitting with his back to a stove.

"Because you were dead," LoAmai said.

Agronak crouched and scooped up the dagger. "I'd expect a Dremora to do a better job," he said.

"I would have, idiot," LoAmai said. She hitched herself up on top of the nearest root. This required her to drag her broken leg across the ground, but she did not wince. "You stopped breathing after you sat down."

"You're mistaken," Agronak said. "I'm talking to you, aren't I?"

"Yes, and this puzzles me as well, I confess," LoAmai said. "But I am not mistaken. You were growing colder."

"I'm not cold now."

The Dremora smiled tightly. "I was using you as a blanket."

"Oh." He sheathed the dagger. "That's... good thinking."

He'd been dreaming. Blood seemed to be a recurring theme. _Gallons of it. _Agronak shrugged this off grimly and went to try to start the fire again. LoAmai watched him poking at half-dead cinders without her usual sardonic amusement.

"You really are strong," he said after a while. "It's no laughing matter, to budge a hundred and eighty pound Orc without using your legs."

"I would rather not have to do it again," LoAmai said. "Is this an aspect of your Undeadness, this dying and rising again?"

"Probably," Agronak said. "I don't know much about what it actually means to be a vampire, much less whatever I am. That was the first time I've slept since I crawled out of my grave." His coaxing finally produced a small tongue of fire. He blew on it gently. A thin rime of frost lay over most of his gathered wood, but he found a few sticks that had been on the bottom and were more or less dry. He nudged one into the tiny flame. It crackled, fizzled, and grew.

"I will not pass another such night," LoAmai said.

Agronak looked at her. She was paler this morning, shading toward ochre on the parts of her skin that were nearer brown than black. _I will not, not _I can't_. Oblivion, but they're a stubborn race. _

"I'll make you a crutch today," he said. "We'll look for some shelter. At least it didn't rain."

"I suspect it may do so tonight," she said, looking up between the branches of the tree. Agronak noticed that she had to squint her crimson eyes mostly shut to look at the sky. _Just like me. Even though it's cloudy._

"I'm sure we'll find a... A cave or something," Agronak said. "I've heard there are dozens of them out here." _Not that I have any idea how to find one._

He went to break the thin ice on the bowl of lion hide. Agronak shook the stiff skin out with difficulty, then took it to rinse in the stream that was the reason he'd chosen this particular camp site. He'd have preferred to stay further back into the wood, but the stream seemed to run along parallel to its edge. He washed his face and hands while he was there. The water was freezing, but he felt more alert afterwards. He looked up, shaking his head, and squinted off into the distance between the trees. It was half a mile away, but he could still see the Oblivion gate.

Six horses stood among the bodies. Six _armored _horses.

"Stendarr," Agronak said, rolled the hide up tightly, and walked quickly back to LoAmai. "We have to go," he said. "It looks like the Legion is at the gate already. I'll have to work on this later."

"You have not made a crutch," LoAmai said.

"You can hold these, and I'll carry you." He shoved the rolled hide into the empty makeshift pot and handed that to the Dremora. He turned to look with loathing on the small fire he'd worked so hard to start. _I can't leave it, or the woodpile. They'd find it. _Agronak kicked the fire apart as best he could, smothered what was left with ash, and scattered his gathered wood quickly around the clearing. _Here's hoping they're not looking for it, because I don't have time. For that matter, I don't know what else to do._

"Ready?" he said.

"We will not escape," LoAmai said. "You will be too slow carrying me."

"Gods, I could think you _wanted _me to leave you here," Agronak said, and picked her up. She hadn't gotten any lighter since yesterday. "Still haven't changed your mind about taking off those greaves?"

"No."

"Then shut up and hold on."

---

"Whoever it was, he wasn't trying too hard to conceal himself, Sir," the Legion woodsman said. He adjusted the fit of the bow over his shoulder. It fit awkwardly around the pauldrons of the bulky steel cuirass. "The ground wasn't frozen yesterday afternoon, and there are only a few prints, but they're _deep_. Either he weighs more than three hundred pounds, or - "

"He was carrying something," said the Legionnaire's Captain. The stocky Imperial looked around the battlefield thoughtfully. The other four soldiers had branched out, looking for any possible survivors. It was unlikely, by this time. The Captain could see frost melting on some of the corpses as the sun rose.

"Right, sir."

"Did you find where the prints start?"

"No, Sir. He went through grass part of the way, and it's all sprung back. Not to mention the muddle of all this." The woodsman waved an all-including hand at the field of battle. "I doubt if we'll even find - "

"Sir!" called one of the Legionnaires from across the field. The Captain clanked over to see what was happening. He moved easily, for a man in steel armor, but noise was a foregone conclusion.

"What is it, Torieni?"

"Found something odd, Sir. Looks like one of the daedra crawled over behind a pillar to die, but it's not there now."

The woodsman went around the Captain and knelt beside the scuffed and frozen patch of ground. "Somebody started a fire here," he said.

"I'm more interested in this," the Captain said. He squatted to pick up a steel arrow. The tip was bloody. A discarded breastplate, the edges warped on one side, lay not far away. The ground was stained dark. "Looks like someone was doing a little first aid here, Aquila."

"Breastplate, no greaves, no gauntlets," the woodsman Aquila said. "That would explain the footprints. A wounded Dremora in half a suit of daedric armor would still be heavy as Mara's heart."

"And some of them can heal themselves," the Captain said.

"Not the archers, Sir," said Torieni.

"How do you know it was an – oh." Torieni was holding up the breastplate. From the front, it looked exactly like any other. From the back, two shallow indentations were visible in the black metal. _Worn into the metal by long, long use. _"Right. That's more or less all they let the women do."

"If you can call them women, Sir," Torieni said. "Some of the mages are, too, but they don't have the armor."

"Right. So we're looking for a topless female Dremora with a big hole in its right side," the Captain said. "This shouldn't take too long. Aquila?"

"That's not all you're looking for, Sir," the woodsman said. He was squatting beside the scorched patch where the fire had been, staring at the ground. "Somebody else was here, too. Somebody in ordinary shoes. The feet are your size, but these are deeper prints."

"Nord? Orc?"

"I can't tell, Sir." He stood up smoothly and paced the edge of the bare patch of dirt, staring at the ground. His face was unreadable under his steel helm. "But I _can _tell you that he left here heavier than he came in. And he was running."

"You must be joking," the Captain said. "No man in his right mind would carry off a Dremora. Even a wounded one. Even a wounded _female _one."

"_Especially _not a female one," Torieni said. "Have you _seen _the females, Sir?"

Aquila shrugged. "I'm only telling you what I see, Sir," he said. "But I agree. He'd have to be crazy."

"Well, if he's too crazy to cover his tracks, he should be easy enough to find," the Captain said. "Are we done here, Torieni?"  
"Just about, Sir. I've got Vendraen making a last sweep, but we're not going to find anyone. There's nothing here to stop the burial detail except the smell."

"They've seen worse," the Captain said. "Round the others up. We're going for a ride."

---

Agronak made it perhaps a mile before he had to stop. His legs were shaking. He struggled to set the Dremora down without dropping her. He could hear his heart beating in his ears. If he listened closely, he was almost positive he heard LoAmai's heartbeat as well. It was faster than his.

"You are weaker than yesterday," she said.

"I don't know what's wrong," Agronak said, leaning with his hands on his knees. "This never happened before." _I can't stop here for long. If the Legion is looking for us we need to cover ground, and fast._

"How long since you drank?" the Dremora said.

"I had a drink at the stream this morning."

The Dremora swore in her own language. "You unutterable fool," LoAmai said. "Water is no good to you, any more than it is to me. Now they will catch up to us while you hunt."

"I'm not going to - "

A vicious snarl interrupted him. "You will do it, or I will kill you myself," LoAmai said. "In your present state, you are useless to me and to yourself. Go."

Argument would mean a further waste of time. Agronak straightened with an effort and stumbled off into the bushes. _I'll never catch anything this way. What are the odds of my practically stepping on another bird as stupid as - _

Then he tripped right over a yearling dear. The animal apparently had been kneeling under a bush, and it tried to struggle to its feet as he regained his balance. Agronak spun around and leaped on it, seizing its head with both hands. He had buried his new fangs in its neck before he realized what he was doing -

- And came to himself with a start. The deer was dead, though its body still twitched slightly. Its heartbeat in his ears had faded, and the red haze was clearing from his vision.

"Oh, _gods," _Agronak said, and let go of it quickly as he staggered upright. It hit the ground with an unpleasant _thump_. He wiped at his mouth and chin, trying to get the blood off. There was something he'd been doing, some reason why he'd decided this was a better fate than dying again... _LoAmai. I've got to find her and get us both out of here._

"LoAmai?" he said.

"Here," the Dremora said. Agronak ran back to where he'd left her, picked her up, and began to run again.

"What about you?" he said.

"I will not need a drink for some time," she said.

"Are you sure?" Agronak said.

"Of course," LoAmai said.

"Yes, I suppose you would be," Agronak said, and ran on.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

_A/N: There's little if any divination in the game, but there are crystal balls. I'm just going to pretend they have a use in the College of Illusion. It also appears I originally confused the rank of female archers in the Construction Set (markynaz or kynmarcher) with the name of the air goddess Kynareth. This should now be fixed. I've revised LoAmai's rank down to kynval, since she seems like more of a noncom type. I apologize for the error, and thanks to Septendeuf for the Imperial Library's address._

Araloch the Diviner stood before his work table, fingering a crystal ball as large as a man's head. Blue light danced on the nearby cavern wall. An image wavered inside the sphere, striving to focus, not quite succeeding. All the old Breton could see was a pale blur and a darkish blur near the top. He received the impression of rapid motion, but the figure's surroundings were no clearer than the figure itself.

"Lord Araloch?"

Araloch sighed in exasperation. The image vanished. He turned to see his confederate Endranor standing with a bowl in his hand. The young High Elf did not seem apologetic, but then, he never did. Endranor's arrogance was surely a significant part of the reason why he'd left conventional magery. He did, fortunately for him, possess considerable talent for necromancy, or Araloch would not have continued to tolerate his presence.

"This had better be important," Araloch said. "This same vision has plagued me for days now, and it still will not come clear."

"I believe I've found the item we were searching for yesterday," Endranor said. He lifted the bowl of blood in his right hand. "If you're not too busy to have a look."

"And, given the limitations of your Illusion skill, how did you do that?" Araloch said, as if he had not been observing Endranor act in specific defiance of his instructions. _A diviner cannot see anything in his own blood._

"I extracted the blood from our prisoner," Endranor said. "As none of my fellow necromancers were willing to volunteer, and my own would not do."

"I told you to leave the Argonian alone," Araloch said. "We need her for later."

"I didn't hurt her," Endranor said. "Not very much." He smiled tightly. "If you're not interested - "

"Show me the vision, curse you," Araloch said. Endranor set the bowl down carefully on the worktable and held his hand over it. He whispered the words Araloch had taught him as the elder necromancer leaned over it. The surface of the blood moved, though the air in the cavern was still, and then a picture began to form.

A hooded and cloaked figure stood on a stone floor in the midst of a circle of dismembered bodies. A hulking figure in dwarven armor lay prominently in the background, the only one still fully intact. The cloaked person was unconcernedly searching the pockets of the nearest intact torso. _Very small. A woman? _After a moment she pushed back her hood, revealing her pointed ears. Her face was bony and thin, and whiter than any Bosmer that Araloch had ever seen. The fabric of the cloak seemed to change color as she moved, from gray to black to brown. _The Robe of Rylyeh. Lighter than any fabric woven by mortals, making its bearer nearly invisible. The Robe of the Traitor, which takes no stains, which is not pierced itself though its wearer be cut to ribbons._

"Who is this?" Araloch said.

"I have been unable to extract a name," Endranor said. "Only the location of the Robe of Rylyeh, which I'm sure you'll agree is far more important."

"Don't be an idiot," Araloch said. "Do you think that's a thief you're looking at, Endranor? Look again."

He watched as the Altmer peered into the bowl again. This time he caught what Araloch had seen the first time. The Bosmer held up a begrimed gemstone and bared her teeth in a silent smile. They were visibly sharper than they ought to be.

"A vampire," Endranor said. "I don't see why that should make any difference to _us_. I myself am more than slightly proficient in destructive fire spells - "

Araloch spoke cuttingly. "I think if you try again, you will find the robe's trail travels to and from Cheydinhal."

Endranor stopped. "Why should that matter?"

"Do you remember the Khajiit we met in Cheydinhal, Endranor?"

"The one who made us leave the empty house? The one whom you maintained was an assassin?" Endranor said.

"Yes, Endranor. And I _know _he was an assassin, because unlike you, I can use detect life spells with a radius larger than my own head. The Dark Brotherhood has a base directly underneath that house."

"I don't know why you seem to think that was the Dark Brotherhood - "

In the bowl, the Bosmer vampire was still poking among the bodies. Araloch watched from the corner of his eye as he continued to argue with Endranor. The huge person in the dwarven armor was stirring, slowly sitting up. The vampire must have heard him, because she got up and ran over to kneel beside him. They appeared to have a brief conversation. Then the armored person took off his helmet and shook out his hair, revealing himself to be an Orc.

"Look," Araloch interrupted. Endranor made an exasperated sound, but returned his attention to the bowl. The Bosmer had taken a burlap sack from the Orc. She seemed to be putting a severed head into it. "Now tell me those aren't assassins, Endranor."

"So what if they are? We'll just have to catch them away from the city and - "

"Endranor, there is no garment ever knit by man or mer for which I will risk the anger of the Night Mother and Sithis. If you go looking for the Robe of the Traitor, you're going alone. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Lord Araloch," Endranor said sullenly.

"Where are the other two?"

"Summoning," Endranor said. "Druriel thinks she's almost up to getting a Dremora here."

"Hope springs eternal," Araloch said, and Endranor snickered nastily.

"She'll never do it. Especially not if she goes on spending all her time cuddling with Larion - "

"Wait," Endranor said. "Did you hear something?"

---

Agronak gro-Malog prodded the wooden door with his foot. It creaked again. He ignored the derisive sound LoAmai made (though it was quite audible, given that her head lay against his shoulder). He might have lived and died a city Orc, but he knew caves didn't come naturally with doors. Particularly with smoke oozing over the top of the rough slats.

"Is anyone there?" he said. No one answered. Agronak adjusted his position so that LoAmai could reach the latch. "Open it," he said.

"We will be outlined against the light."

"Then I'll turn sideways," he said. The Dremora reached out and worked the catch. The door slid slowly open. Agronak turned to the side and edged slowly in. The door clapped shut suddenly, making him twitch. He did not lose his grip on the Dremora. _Could I have carried her so far at a run before, I wonder? I'm not even breathing hard now._

His eyes adjusted quickly to the dim. In fact, it was easier to see here than in the blinding daylight. A corridor of rough stone sloped downward in front of them. A few wisp stalk mushrooms sprouted along the wall.

Some of the stalks were broken off. Agronak eyed them thoughtfully. _Who'd want to live in a cave?_

_Besides a vampire, that is. I think I hear water running somewhere._

"I'm going to set you down here," he said quietly. "Then I'm going to see if there's anything down there."

"Set me further down," LoAmai said. "By the bend in the wall."

Agronak complied without speaking. He drew his knife as he straightened, then stuck his head around the corner at the base of the little hallway.

The cave opened out into a large room, bisected by a deep channel of running water. A bridge of natural stone arched over it in one place. Tables lined the walls, covered with books and alchemy equipment. _And bones, _Agronak recognized. _And... That smells like... _Agronak forcibly diverted himself from this line of thought. _Sorcerers live here. _

He looked around carefully. A set of four sleeping mats lined one wall, close to a charred indentation in which a small fire burned. A couple of High Elves sat on one of the mats, embracing enthusiastically. Both wore black robes.

"Hello?" Agronak said.

The male Elf threw a fireball at his head. Agronak threw himself sideways, rolled, and came to his feet in a split second. He'd caught a glimpse of a skull emblem on the Altmer's robe as he moved. _Wonderful. I should have known._

"Idiot Orc," the Dremora said.

"What, I was supposed to know they were necromancers?" Agronak said. "As if I've ever seen one before?"

"If you had bothered to ask..."

"Would you really have told me?"

"Perhaps," LoAmai said. Agronak, now crouched beside the bend in the wall, glanced back and saw her white teeth in the dark. One of the Elves was shouting something. It sounded like a name. _Araloch? _Agronak drew his knife silently and shifted from foot to foot, waiting. _I chose a good spot. They can't get me with a spell unless they bounce a fireball around the corner, and that's ris - _

He ducked again as a fireball bounced off the nearest corner and shot at his head. It singed the top of his skull as it went over. He heard it impact the wall further down the hall with a _boom _and a hiss. _Oops. _

Agronak stood still, waiting. Whichever of them it was didn't try again. _Saving their magicka in case they missed me. _He heard footsteps approach, then stop. _One will get you ten that's the man. He's going to lunge around the corner with a weapon. Probably yelling something, _Agronak thought, finally confronted with something familiar. _They always do that in the Arena, like I don't know they're on the other side of a pillar when I just saw them run around it._

A second later his guess was confirmed. The male Altmer charged around the bend in the passage, shouting an inarticulate "Aaaaaargh!" as he waved a silver mace.

Agronak stabbed him through the eye.

He stepped aside as the body fell, but he held onto the knife. It slid easily out of the socket, because he'd turned it sideways at just the right angle. He'd been proud of that, once. Not many people remembered that when you stuck a blade into somebody's head it tended to hang up on things. Agronak sighed silently as he scooped up the mace. It had a reassuring weight in his hand. _Finally. Something with some reach. _

He squatted to wipe the knife on the dead Elf's robe, then sheathed it.

"Larion?" a female voice said hesitantly. "Did you get him?"

"What's all the noise?" another male voice demanded. Agronak listened to the sound of at least two more people entering the room at a run.

"There's an Orc over there. I... I think he must have killed Larion..."

Agronak glanced back and saw LoAmai dragging herself sideways, toward a position where she could see into the room. Her greaves rasped harshly on the stone floor of the cave. The necromancers fell abruptly silent.

"Was he armored?" a second male voice asked. This one sounded much older than the first one.

"I couldn't tell. He only just stuck his head out."

"Well, it sounds as if he's wounded, at least. Go finish him off," said the younger male voice. Agronak thought, on further consideration, that it sounded like another Altmer. It had that looking-down-the-nose sound they all seemed to have, even the ones who were born in the gutter and never learned to read. _The ones that mostly end up places like the Arena._

"You go," the woman said. "You're the one with the sword."

"Oh, fine." There was a metallic _shwing _as the unseen weapon was drawn.

_Sword? _Agronak thought. He debated silently whether to keep that or stick with the mace. _Something a little lighter wouldn't be bad, especially if it's longer than this. _The sound of footsteps came closer, then moved to one side. Agronak smiled. _This one's a little smarter than the other one._

The Elf rounded the corner low, silent, and considerably further away. Unfortunately for him, he was also slower than Agronak. The mace hit him in the side of the head when he had only halfway raised the sword. It made a sickening _crunch, _and Agronak caught the weapon neatly as it fell from his hand. The Gray Prince dodged backwards to avoid another fireball. He set the mace down and hefted the longsword in his right hand. _Silver again. It's not ebony, but it'll do._

He twitched sideways as something went _hiss _and then _twang _behind him. He turned to see LoAmai with a bow in her hand. The string was vibrating.

"How did you - "

The sound of another body falling interrupted him. LoAmai scooted sideways, but not quickly enough to avoid the spell. The ball of green energy spread out like a net as it hit her. She toppled slowly sideways. The bow vanished as her fingers lost their grip.

"A Dremora," said the older male voice. "How very interesting. Not many who move as quickly as you do can summon so well."

Agronak seized LoAmai by the scruff of her coat and dragged her back out of sight. She was still breathing, but she'd gone completely limp. _Paralyzed. Talos, but I hate Illusion spells._

"I didn't come here looking for a fight," Agronak said. The sound echoed strangely in the narrow passage.

"But now you know our, or rather my, location. I'm afraid it would be inconvenient for me if that information were to reach the Mages' Guild. No, I'm afraid I cannot even allow you to leave, my Orcish friend."

"I'm not Orcish, and I'm certainly not your friend," Agronak said. This time he was expecting the fireball, targeted at his voice. He dodged the other way. This one missed him by a greater margin than the previous one. It came fairly close to LoAmai, but since she was still lying flat, it missed her as well. _I'll wager she'll have words to say when she snaps out of it._

Footsteps approached. Agronak thought rapidly as he listened. _He's not going to make the same mistake as the other two. He'll probably try and bounce another spell closer up, where it'll be harder to get away from. Or he's counting on me to jump him when he gets within reach, and he's got something shorter-range planned. _Agronak grimaced silently, thinking of the draining spells he'd survived up close. _Not something I'd really care to do again, thanks. But he sounds old. He's probably been a mage longer than I've been a fighter. He'll probably try to outwait me, see if I try to run away so he can hit me in the back._

_Hmmm. _Agronak began to back slowly up the hall, not even trying to disguise the sound of his footsteps._ It's to his advantage to follow me in here. I'll have a harder time avoiding him in a confined space. _

A cloaked figure ducked around the bend down below when he was about halfway up the hall. Another spell, this one a halo of blue, flew from the man's fingers. It briefly lit the lined face of an older Human, and then Agronak threw himself flat on his back and began to slide down the slope.

Then he heard a snarl, and a startled cry. Agronak scrabbled for purchase on the dusty floor. He made it on the second try, just in time to see the Human fall to his knees. LoAmai withdrew her knife from the necromancer's leg and stabbed him in the temple. The daedric knife cut bone as if it were flesh, and flesh as if it were butter. The old Human dropped without a sound.

"I'd have expected that spell to last longer," Agronak said as he came to inspect the body. The kynval extracted her knife and wiped it on the man's robe.

"I have been hit by a great many spells," she said. "One grows more resistant over time."

"Not that _I've _noticed. Sometime we've got to figure out just how old 'three thousand souls' actually is."

"I would like to have my arrow back," LoAmai said.

"What, that same arrow?" Agronak said.

"Where would I find another, Orc of Nirn?"

"How's your leg?"

"It is still broken," LoAmai said.

"I'm going to go and see if anyone else is here," Agronak said.

"Then cease wasting your breath and go."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

_A/N: I write a lot of these notes, don't I. Think of it as bonus material, or else blame it on Lorok. :)_

_For those unfamiliar with the term, a tympanum is what lizards have instead of an external ear. In Oblivion it's the round, flat patch on each side of an Argonian's face. _

_Variable eye colors come from the Cosmetic Compilation mods._

Agronak peered out into the cavern, sword in hand. Nothing moved. LoAmai's arrow was quite visible, sticking out of the Elven woman's eye socket. After a moment's watching, he edged out into the main room. The sound of water running through the channel in the floor was louder here, a soft roar in the background. A dark opening on the opposite wall suggested another room. Agronak crossed the bridge quickly and went to look.

The second chamber was smaller. The air was much colder, unwarmed by the fire in the other room. A crystal ball stood on a table surrounded by books. A bowl of blood sat next to it. _The color's always darker than you expect, but you can't mistake the smell. At least, I can't any more._

Agronak turned away from that and looked at the corner of the room. Someone had wedged a set of iron bars between the floor and the ceiling, forming a crude semicircle. _ These skinny men and mer didn't do that. But then, the old one did say they were conjurers. And I've heard zombies are strong._

Something lay curled up against the bars, one gray arm flung out between them. Agronak went to look. Up close, he could see the scales. _An Argonian. _Someone had made a cut on the reptile's arm, but it had clearly clotted up already.

"Are you all right?" Agronak said. There was no answer. He prodded the arm gently with the tip of the sword. There was no response. He edged a little closer and pressed his fingers against the Argonian's wrist. It was cold to the touch. "Dead," he muttered. "Probably been dead for hou - "

Something throbbed under his fingers. Agronak held very still, counting. Some five seconds later, it happened again. _Not dead, but probably close to frozen. It's not comfortable in here for me. I hate to think what it's like to a cold-blooded creature._

"Divines," Agronak growled under his breath, and looked around for the door. A small panel of wood was wedged between the bars at one end. It was probably too tight for an undernourished and freezing person to budge. It presented no problem to Agronak. He tossed the panel aside and ducked into the little cell, avoiding kicking over what was evidently the toilet bucket.

"Can you hear me?" he said. Still no answer. Agronak knelt beside the Argonian and gently turned it over. _Not it. Her. _It took some practice to tell Argonians apart by looking at their faces, to distinguish one saurian snout from another, but Agronak had learned.Besides, she had scraps of black ribbon tied around some of the little curved bone spurs on either side of her face. Her muzzle was bony and narrow, and her body under the tattered robe was painfully thin. _Those unutterable bastards. She can't be more than seventeen. _

He checked her carefully for broken bones, then lifted her up and carried her out of the cell. _This seems to be my week for that. At least she weighs a lot less than a Dremora in armor. _Her eyes were half open, showing slits of vivid green, but she lay without any indication that she knew what was happening. Her tail did not twitch as it lay draped over Agronak's arm. He went back into the other room and deposited her on one of the blanket rolls. Then he pulled a blanket up to her shoulders, checked to see that the fire was still going strong, and went to retrieve LoAmai's arrow. He took it across the bridge and back to the hallway.

"I found an Argonian in a cell in the back," Agronak told the kynval as he bent to pick her up.

"I do not know this word," LoAmai said.

"They're sort of like... Well... If Khajiit are sort of like lions, Argonians are sort of like lizards," Agronak said. "They're people, but they have tails."  
"What is a lizard?"

Agronak crossed the bridge, watching his footing, before he answered. "They're cold-blooded and they have scales."

"Like clannfear," LoAmai said.

"I wouldn't know. I've never seen a clannfear."

"Did you kill this Argonian?" the Dremora asked.

"No. They were holding her prisoner. They've evidently been bleeding her." He set LoAmai on a blanket roll on the opposite end of the row from the girl, just in case. The Dremora sat up arrogantly straight, surveying the unconscious Argonian.

"She appears to be dead," LoAmai said.

Agronak went to check the Argonian's pulse again. It seemed only marginally faster. "She's slowed way down. It happens to Argonians when they get too cold. Puts them at a disadvantage in the Arena, this time of year."

"Will you drink her blood?" LoAmai said.

"_No_," Agronak said. He glared at the kynval across the girl's unconscious body. She did not seem impressed. "And neither will you."

The Dremora raised one eyebrow. "Again this curious reluctance," she said. "Why do you resist behaving as what you are?"

"Because it's not what I should be," Agronak said. "I didn't choose it. I won't collaborate with it."

"No one chooses what they are born," LoAmai said.

"We can choose what we do," Agronak said.

LoAmai shrugged. "So long as this insanity does not result in my death."

"Not until it results in mine," Agronak said. "After that, you're on your own. For that matter, I don't see any reason for you to stay once your leg heals up."

"Do you not?" LoAmai said. "The Kyn do not spare the weak, but debt is well understood among us." She bared her teeth. "Besides, where shall I go? How long do you think one kynval would last alone on this plane?"

"Given your charming manners? A couple of days," Agronak said.

"Precisely."

"You might be able to find someone who could send you back to Oblivion," Agronak said. He went to look for something with which to draw water. There was a bucket sitting next to the bridge. He used it to scoop a pailful from the channel.

"I would not live much longer there," LoAmai said, raising her voice so that he could hear her over the water. The cavern's echo tended to warp her already-distorted voice even further. "The Kynmarcher – the lord of my citadel died at the gate. There will be battle to determine who will rule there. Whoever wins, they will not spare his offspring."

"He was your father?" Agronak said. He drank from the lip of the bucket. The water tasted as clean as any he'd drunk in the Imperial City.

"This means the same as progenitor?" LoAmai said.

"Almost," Agronak said.

"Then yes. He _fathered_ many of the kynvals in the citadel. Some of the caitiffs as well."

"I'm sorry," Agronak said.

"Why?" LoAmai said. "I am not. Except that it left me stranded here."

Agronak shook his head. "I'm never going to understand Dremoras."

"Dremora."

"What?"

"One Dremora, five Dremora, three thousand Dremora. Not 'Dremoras.'"

"Whichever. Do you want a drink of water?"

"No," LoAmai said.  
"How about the bowl of blood from the other room?"

"That would suffice."

Agronak set the bucket down beside the Argonian. "Leave her alone while I'm gone."  
"You want her alive," LoAmai said. "I will leave her so."

"I suppose that'll have to do," Agronak said, and went to retrieve the bowl.

When he came back, the Argonian lay in exactly the same position as before.

"Did she move at all?" he said. He handed the bowl to the kynval. She had not moved from her position, sitting bolt upright on the bedroll furthest from the girl.

"No," LoAmai said. "You are certain she is not dead?"

This time he set his fingers against the artery in her neck. "She's alive," he said. "But she's not warming up very quickly."

"Explain to me again why you are not going to kill her," LoAmai said. She held the bowl of blood up to her lips and sipped, more delicately than Agronak had expected. He tried not to watch.

"Because it would be the wrong thing to do," Agronak said patiently. This earned him another raised eyebrow. "The Command of Stendarr says to protect the weak. I might want to go back into a temple some time in my life."  
"You worship the Aedra?" LoAmai said.

"I'm not what you'd call devout. I know the Commands." Agronak looked down at the Argonian. "I don't think this blanket is doing much good." _I'm not putting her with LoAmai, even if she _is _warmer than I am. _He sat down on the edge of the bedroll and eased the creature onto his lap as he slid over. The Argonian's head lolled. He lifted her upper body and held her carefully against his tunic, keeping a fold of blanket between them. After LoAmai's solid weight, it was like holding a feather. _Bleeding Stendarr. She's still freezing._

"What could they possibly have wanted with a half-starved girl?" Agronak said aloud. "She'd make a lousy zombie, and even I know you don't need blood to conjure."

"It is necessary for divination," LoAmai said.

"What, you mean like seeing the future? Nobody can do that. Not really."

"Perhaps," LoAmai said. "It appears that they continue to attempt it on this plane as well as in Oblivion. The visions are generally unclear and contradictory, but the krynvelhat continue to try."

"So they bled a living person for a look at something nobody could understand," Agronak said. "I wish I hadn't killed them so quickly."

"On this we are agreed," LoAmai said.

---

No Claws lay for a long time without knowing where she was. She remembered Lord Araloch and the cave. She remembered the cell. She'd almost gotten out once, but then they'd taken away her fire. After that, everything was cold and vague. Her left arm stung slightly. She wasn't sure why.

Gradually, as heat began to revive her, she realized she was no longer lying on stone. Nor, for that matter, was she lying flat at all. The large, warm thing pressed against her right side was moving in and out in the manner characteristic of breathing things everywhere. A heart was beating somewhere under her right tympanum. There was light in her eyes. She shut them reflexively.

"She just blinked," said a male voice.

It was another few minutes before she could move her lower jaw far enough to say, "Who... ?"

"Shh," said the same voice. An arm as soft as a rock adjusted itself around her left shoulder. _A very big voice. Orc? _"Wait until you're warmer. Then talk."

No Claws waited. Feeling was returning to her legs and tail. _Pins and needles. _She shifted awkwardly, flexing her bare toes. She squeezed her eyes open. The light she'd seen was a fire, and her limited perspective also contained a blanket roll and part of another one. A tin bucket sat next to the crossed legs of whomever she was sitting on.

"Water?" she said.

"Here." The Orc reached for the bucket with his other arm and held it up to her muzzle. It is possible for a dextrous Argonian to drink from the narrow lip of a cup or a glass, but No Claws was not quite that coordinated yet. She stuck her entire face into the bucket instead. The water was not freezing, because the bucket had been near the fire. It was quite possibly the best thing she'd ever tasted.

No Claws dragged her dripping muzzle out of the bucket at last, breathing deeply. There was a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She wiped her mouth on it carefully. Her hands didn't seem up to the task quite yet. Then she raised her head and looked at the Orc on whose lap she was sitting.

He was pale for an Orc. Not just light green, but a sort of not-quite-gray. The scars around his deep sockets were almost white, and his eyes were very pale blue. _Orcish eyes aren't supposed to be that color. And only one Orc in all Tamriel is gray. And that Orc is dead. _

"Thank you," she managed after a second. She watched his mouth closely as he spoke.

"No probl – careful!"  
No Claws struggled, tangled herself in the folds of the blanket, and fell sideways off his lap and onto the stone floor. She scrambled sideways, away from the dead Orc. She pulled the blanket tight around her shoulders.

"You're a vampire," she said. "I should've known. They were saying Agronak gro-Malog had turned out to be a - "

"Half," the Orc said. "I'm half Orc. And that was less than a week ago. How did you know?"

"Endranor watches the Arena in the crystal ball," No Claws said. She watched him warily as she sat on the stone floor. He did not seem about to get up and come after her. "Where _is _Endranor? Where is the viper Araloch?" She looked around the room. Her eyes fell on the body of the Altmer Druriel, lying close to the channel that split the room. The ruin of her left eye was clearly visible. "You killed th – Mara Mother Mild, what is _that_?"

Agronak gro-Malog followed the direction of her gaze. "That's a Dremora with a broken leg," he said. "She won't hurt you. Her name is LoAmai. I suppose you already know who I am."

"You're the Gray Prince," No Claws said. "You don't speak like most of the Orcs I've met." She did not take her eyes from the daedra, which was watching her with narrow eyes and a curled lip. She'd seen Dremoras summoned once or twice. She'd never seen one wearing a sleeveless leather coat. For that matter, she didn't know that she'd ever seen one sitting down.

"I had tutors," the Orc said. "Until I was fifteen. For that matter, you don't sound like most of the Argonians I've met."

"I was born in the Imperial City," No Claws said. "I've never been to the Marsh. Did you really kill Araloch?"

"Actually, LoAmai killed him," Agronak said. "And the woman. I killed the others, I'm afraid. They attacked us as soon as they saw us."

"They would," No Claws said. Cold-blooded creatures do not shiver. She twitched her tail instead, making the blanket rasp along the floor behind her. "Monsters. I owe you a debt." She edged closer to the fire.

"How did you end up here?" Agronak said.

"I wanted to be a mage," she said. "Araloch said he would teach me."  
The Dremora said something quietly, almost drowned out by the running water. No Claws recognized the word _fool. _

"Yes, I was fatally stupid," she said. "It seemed better than starving to death after they expelled me from the University."

"What about your parents?" Agronak said.

"What about them?" No Claws snorted. "My father is a cooper and I have four brothers and five sisters. They threw me out when I was fourteen."

"And you're what, sixteen now? Isn't that a little young for the Arcane University?"

"I had – I have - some talent," No Claws said. "I might have been a little too free in the exercise of it. My name is No Claws, by the way."

"Pleased to meet you," the Orc said. The Dremora looked at him with raised eyebrows, as if he were speaking an unknown tongue.

"What are you going to do now?" No Claws said.

"Well," Agronak gro-Malog got to his feet without making any sudden movements. "I'll see if I can find some food for you, since you look like you haven't eaten in a week. Then I'm going to drag the bodies outside and see if I can manage to bury them. There's got to be a shovel around here somewhere."

No Claws looked at LoAmai and thought about the prospect of being alone in the cave with a Dremora.

"I'll help you find it," she said.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

"He can't be _completely _crazy," Torieni said. "He knew enough to make another fire."

"I suspect he's a city man," Aquila said, crouching beside a tree. "Or Orc." He looked at the depression in the cold ground there.

"You mean he was trying to cover it up and he didn't know how?" the Captain said. He surveyed the obviously artificial scattering of wood around the clearing. He'd left his other three Legionnaires behind to wait for the burial detail.

"That would be my guess, Sir. The Dremora sat here for a long time without moving. From the way this root is scraped on the other side, I'd say the man sat here, too."

"What, next to the demon?"

"Yes, Sir."

"I take it back, Captain," Torieni said. "He _is _completely insane."

"Could it be the creature is controlling his mind somehow?" the Captain wondered aloud. "Using him to keep itself alive?"

"I don't think Dremoras can do that, Sir," Aquila said. "I think we'd have seen it by now."

"Yes," the Captain said. "Given how many of the blighters we've fought in the last month."

Aquila stood up. The Captain followed his gaze to the very obvious break in the brush, where something large had gone crashing off through the woods.

"Maybe he left in a hurry," the Captain said. "Torieni, can you see the gate from here?"

"No, Sir," Torieni said. He took off his helmet and wedged it under one arm. Then he scratched the top of his head, disarranging his brown hair. "Too many trees in the way."

"But there's a break in the brush where the stream comes out," Aquila said. "He could've seen us from there."

"So now he's evading pursuit," Torieni said.

"I'm liking this less all the time," the Captain said.

---

LoAmai waited silently in the cavern. It was uncomfortably cold, but it was better than outside, and the fire helped. _Here I could survive a full night without another body for insulation. I wonder if the Argonian will notice when Agronak dies again. _She considered the possibilities. The girl (Agronak called her so, and the kynval was willing to accept his assertion) was some kind of mage. That made her more of a threat to LoAmai personally than Agronak was. LoAmai's strong impulse was to stab her in the head as soon as she was asleep and Agronak was...

Dead, asleep, or whatever that state ought properly to be called. The kynval did not concern herself much with that. She was too busy silently cursing her situation. She had few qualms about lying to Agronak. Even sworn to him in debt, she had only to prevent harm from coming to _him._

_But this – child? - is debtsworn to him also, _she thought, pursuing the reasoning with the juggernaut tenacity of a stone rolling downhill._ I heard her say so. I could not slay another Kyn of my own Citadel and my own clan, did not they challenge me first. There would be no living spellslingers in the Citadel otherwise. I was not the only one who hated them. So long as we are debtsworn to this same Orc, I can do her no harm. _

_May she rot in the lowest plane, _LoAmai thought, but it was a curse without venom. Her mind was made up, her path entirely clear. _Agronak seems to think she is very young. Perhaps she has less power to do harm than the old ones do. _

_---_

"You ought to go back down to the fire," Agronak said. He tossed another shovelful of dirt out of the hole. He'd found a patch of ground with fewer rocks in it a few yards away from the cave mouth, but he wasn't quite up to his waist yet. "You'll freeze up again if you stay out here in that."

"It's warmer than the rag I was wearing," No Claws said. She stood on the edge of the hole, nibbling on a cold shepherd's pie they had found. She now wore a robe and shoes that were slightly too big for her. The Elven woman had turned out to own a coat as well, folded up in a chest at the back of the cave. The Argonian's scales were still gray, but patches of bright green were now visible on her head and neck, covering the space around her eyes like a mask. Her eyes were almost the same shade, completing the impression.

_Fortunately, the coat covers up that skull emblem, _Agronak thought. _Though we're in worse trouble than that if somebody sees LoAmai and me out here._

"Not warm enough, for this kind of weather," Agronak said. He glanced up at the overcast sky. It was not yet midafternoon, but it was already dark enough that he could look directly at it. "It's going to rain soon."

"If it's all the same to you, I would rather not be alone with a Dremora," the Argonian said.

"Oh." Agronak paused to survey his work, judged the hole deep enough, and leaped easily out. "I'd say don't worry, but I think that's probably a bad idea. Just don't get within her reach. She's still got a broken leg, so it's not as if she can chase you."

"This attitude is not reassuring," the Argonian said. She watched Agronak pick up each body and drop them into the hole.

"No, but it's probably safer," he said. "Dremoras don't think quite the same way as mortals do."

"How did you end up in company with a daedra?" No Claws said. "You don't seem like a summoner."

"Not me," Agronak agreed. "I ran across a battlefield at a closed gate. She was the lone survivor."

"And her leg was broken during the battle?"

"That's right." He started to fill in the hole again.

"So you carried her all the way here?"

Agronak shrugged. "It's not as if I had a horse. I've got nothing but the clothes on my back, and I crawled out of the ground without even those."

"So you _were _dead," No Claws said. From the corner of his eye, he saw her edge a little further away.

"I'm fairly sure I was," Agronak said. "But I'm still not all vampire. I wouldn't be outside in the daylight, for one thing."

No Claws took another bite of the pie. Agronak went on dropping shovelfuls of earth onto the bodies, trying not to look closely at them. Divines knew he'd killed enough people, but there was something uniquely unpleasant about watching someone's eyes and mouth fill up with dirt. _I know what she's thinking about asking, _he thought glumly. _I wonder if she'll do it._

"So what do you live on?" No Claws said.

_Ha. _Agronak straightened up and looked at her over the handle of the shovel. "You're asking a lot of questions, for someone I've only just met," he said.

"Then ask me something," No Claws said.

Agronak considered for a moment. "Where'd you get that name?"

No Claws held up one hand. The ends of her fingers were completely smooth. She had no trace of claw or nails.

"Oh. I was expecting something less literal." Agronak resumed the work of burial, trying to go faster. Was that a drop of water he'd felt?

"I was born without them," she said. "Both hands."

"Hmm."

"You did not answer my question," the Argonian said. She finished eating the pie and licked the ends of her fingers off, but she did not take her eyes from the Orc. Agronak sighed. The hole was almost filled in now, and he had definitely felt a drop of freezing water on the top of his head.

"I have to have blood," he said. "So does LoAmai. The difference is that for her it doesn't matter if it's alive or dead. For what it's worth to you, I've never laid hands on a person for that purpose."

"You will," No Claws predicted grimly.

"I knew you were going to say that. You're almost as bad as she is."

"Only because I want to live," No Claws said.

"Oh. Wonderful," Agronak said coldly. "I _was _going to wait until you fatten up and then drain you dry, but now I've changed my mind. Happy?"

"This is not funny," No Claws said. She stood with her arms folded, looking as stern as it is possible for a skinny seventeen-year-old Argonian to look.

"Words cannot express how funny it's not," Agronak said. He tamped down the small mound of dirt with the top of the shovel, then slung the implement up onto one shoulder. "I'm going back inside now. You're welcome to do the same. If you think it's worth the risk, that is."

"It's not as if I had a choice," No Claws said.

"Thank you for pointing that out."

"I don't see why you're so angry," No Claws said, trotting after him through the door to the cavern. She did not slam it closed, but Agronak had the impression she wanted to. He set the shovel carefully against the wall by the doorway. Then he turned to look down at the girl.

"Look," he said. He didn't raise his voice. He almost never did. It was one more thing that made him less Orcish, but shouting couldn't change that. "How exactly do you think I died the first time?"

"You were killed in the Arena," No Claws said. "By the Black Arrow. He challenged you and won."

"Right," Agronak said. "How do you think he did that?"

"He must have been str - " Agronak watched No Claws run back over what she'd recently watched him do, including carrying two of the bodies outside at once. "No. He cannot have been stronger than a half-vampire. And you were the Arena champion for longer than I can remember."

"Good," Agronak said. "You're thinking now. Try and keep that up. I wasn't willing to live with being what I am. It just happened to be my luck that I didn't stay dead." He folded his arms slowly and leaned back against the cold stone wall. "I'm not going to hurt you, or LoAmai, or anyone else who isn't trying to kill me. Under the circumstances, it would be unreasonable for me to expect you to trust me. I'll do whatever you feel is necessary to ensure your safety. But don't keep on insulting me."

"Or what?" No Claws said suspiciously.

"Or I will be crushed beyond all mortal ken," he said, rolling his eyes. "Let it go, all right?"

---

"I don't think he knows anything about tracking at all, Sir," Aquila said, shaking his head in professional disapproval. The lanky man, made bulky by his steel armor, crouched easily beside the large and muddy footprints that led up the bank of the stream. "He ran right through here without stopping. I mean, all he'd have to do to make his trail plenty harder to follow would be run upstream a few yards to where the rocks are."

"Well, it's not as if the demon could tell him that," the Captain said. "There's no running water in Oblivion."

"That's not what worries _me, _Sir," Torieni said. The shorter man stood by the horses, holding their reins.

"What worries you, Torieni?" the Captain said.

"Well. Aquila here is the woodsman, but it looks to me like those tracks are pretty far apart coming up out of that stream. On a steep bank. In the mud."

"He's right," Aquila said. "Much as I hate to admit it. Our city man never even slowed down here. And as deep as the prints are, it looks like he was still carrying the Dremora."

"Berserk, maybe?" the Captain said. "I've known one or two Orcs that could have done that."

"And kept it up for five miles at a dead run, carrying somebody in armor?" Torieni said. "I'm starting to wonder if three of us is enough."

"Aquila?" the Captain said. "Will we lose them if we wait for the others to catch up?"

"Almost certainly, Sir," Aquila said.

"Then we'll keep on. Can't have Dremoras running around where they don't belong."

"Actually it's still being carried, Sir."

"Aquila," the Captain said, rubbing his face under the nosepiece of his helmet. "Shut up."

"Yes, Sir."


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

LoAmai listened closely, but did not hear footsteps until the Argonian was already inside the cavern. She moved stiffly. The end of her tail twitched, the way a daedroth's would when it was angry. _Agronak is still alive, then. He is gifted in that area. _Confirming her certainty, Agronak stomped in not long after the girl. LoAmai felt the vibration of his steps through the floor before she heard it.

The girl crossed the bridge, passed the kynval, and kept on going into the other room. Agronak paused beside the fire, stretching out his hands.

"Did she attempt to kill you?" LoAmai said. She didn't have much hope, but it was still worth asking.

"No," Agronak said. "She thinks things are going to be the other way around."

"Then she is an idiot," LoAmai said firmly. "A worse one than you are, Orc of Nirn."

"Thanks," Agronak said.

"Does this word really have a meaning, here?"

"It's what you say when someone does something for you," Agronak said.

"I observe that this Argonian does not say it to you," LoAmai said.

"Yes," said Agronak. "I observed that, too."

---

No Claws made her way across the cavern's second chamber, fuming silently. _Who does he think he is? _And what was she supposed to think, finding herself alone in a cave with a vampire Orc? _Let alone an unsummoned daedra. _Everyone knew about vampires. _Everyone. I'm supposed to trust him wholeheartedly just because he saved my - _

She paused in midstep, almost tripping. It took a few seconds to build back her righteous indignation, but No Claws was determined. _I lost track of my sense of self-preservation badly enough with Araloch, or none of this would be happening, _she told herself.

_It wouldn't be happening because I'd be starving to death somewhere in the Imperial City, _she thought, and her carefully hoarded anger evaporated. _It's not as though I'd had some grand plan. The University put a stop to that fast enough. I need to be alone. I need to think, and I need to talk to someone who isn't going to be staring at my neck like it's a piece of mutton. _This last was not strictly fair – Agronak had been very carefully not looking at her, she'd noticed that - but she wasn't inclined to be charitable. Being irritated was easier than being stark terrified.

No Claws shook her head and went to look for the catch. She'd seen the old diviner tap his hand on the wall somewhere along here one time, where there was a knob shaped something like a hand...

There it was. No Claws shoved at the spot several times before the door in the stone glided open. She'd seen the others duck on their way in, but No Claws was not tall for her race. She marched resolutely into the dark hole, one hand raised to call up a spark of light. A dim green glow flared up around her. She spent just a little magicka on that, because she would need all the rest in just a moment.

The thin glow showed the racks of bottles against two walls and the single chair against a third. No Claws seized the chair, pushed it outside, and pressed the catch on the inside of the doorpost. The stone shut without showing a seam, closing her in the little tomblike space. _He couldn't find me in here if he tried. Stupid Orc, _No Claws thought, unaware that LoAmai had just made a very similar remark in the other room.

Then she raised both arms, calling on the reserve of magicka her body had slowly gathered through all the time she lay in torpor. The ends of her clawless fingers began to glow bright gold. It reflected off the rows of dark bottles, lighting the small room with many small points of yellow. Then she said a single word:

_"Barsabas."_

The light grew into a blinding flash, then coalesced into a shape, fading from gold to black hair and white skin. A tall Imperial blinked down at her. He might have been a handsome man, in life. He'd never reached the age of having to worry about wrinkles. But now he was pale, and very gaunt, and a thin film of white covered the surface of his eyes. The end of a line of stitches was visible above his dark collar. There were no other marks on him.

"It's all right," No Claws said. "No one is attacking us. Not right now."

A very cold hand groped for No Claws' shoulder in the dim light. Fingers that could crush her bones like sticks rested very carefully there, recognizing the new want of flesh. The other party made an unhappy sound.

"I'm all right," No Claws said soothingly. She could never stay angry around Barsabas. Nothing that could happen to her was worse than what had already happened to him. A certain kind of terrible clarity followed him wherever he went. "I know you did the best you could, Barsabas. There were just too many of them. I couldn't keep them from dispelling you."

"Where?" said Barsabas, looking around the tiny room. He shuddered. Not a lot of zombies could do that, No Claws thought proudly. And he didn't smell any worse than expensive liquor. She'd seen to that.

"We're still in the cave," she said. "I can open the door again, when I want to. All the necromancers are dead, and I need to talk to someone."

"Dead," Barsabas repeated woodenly. He let go of her shoulder, staring down into her face. "Not you."

"No, not me. I'm still here," No Claws said. "But the Orc who killed Araloch is half vampire."

"Vampires," Barsabas said. "Bad."

"That's right," No Claws said. The Imperial frowned, trying to form thoughts inside a brain that was presently running entirely on magical energy. Barsabas' thinking seemed to come and go with how much magicka she spent on him. She'd had him up to whole sentences one time, but she hadn't been able to cast a spell for two days afterwards. _Perhaps I could've refined it further, if they hadn't caught me and thrown me out._

"Half vampire. Half bad?" Barsabas said.

"I suppose you could look at it that way," No Claws said.

"Better than most," Barsabas said glumly.

He spun around between her and the door as it started to open. Light flooded in. Agronak gro-Malog stuck his head around the doorpost, refraining from silhouetting himself against the doorway.

"Who are _you_?" Agronak said.

"Half Orc?" Barsabas said. He spread his hands, swaying slightly from side to side.

"You look Human to me," Agronak said.

"He means you," No Claws said. "Yes, Barsabas, that's him."

Barsabas made an inquiring noise, a guttural _Hrrrnnghhh? _It was sad, very angry, and the dram of hope it conveyed was awful.

"Not yet," No Claws said. Barsabas edged to one side as she came forward, but he did not take his eyes from the Orc.

"What are you doing?" Agronak said.

"Minding my own business," No Claws said. "How did you know I was in here?"

"It was either that or you'd turned into a chair," Agronak said, hefting the discarded piece of furniture demonstratively with one hand. "I heard your voice. Where did _you _come from?" he said to Barsabas. The zombie opened and shut his mouth helplessly, then turned to No Claws for help.

"Most of the time he's stuck somewhere between here and the next plane," No Claws said. Agronak backed out into the cavern as she came forward. Barsabas kept beside her, not quite between her and Agronak. "I had to burn his body before they could get to it and perform the Rites of Arkay. I can still summon him, but he's only solid for as long as the magicka holds out."

"One minute," Barsabas said. "One hour. One day." He stared fixedly at the Orc, frowning. Dead men have no need to blink, but No Claws saw him blink once or twice as well.

"You mean he's a zombie," Agronak said. He set the chair aside, watching Barsabas warily. "Which makes you a necromancer."

"No!" No Claws protested. "I'd never kill anyone. I'd never do to anyone what Araloch did to me."

"You will," Agronak said. "There aren't any good necromancers, girl."

"I don't have to explain myself to an Orcish vampire." No Claws folded her arms. "This is ridiculous."

"I agree," Agronak said, shaking his head. "All we have to do now is find an injured assassin for me to haul around and my week will be utterly complete."

"I know you," Barsabas said suddenly. "You're Agronak." The half-Orc and the Argonian turned to stare at him.

"What?" No Claws said. She watched Agronak's eyes narrow, scanning the dead man's face.

"I'm surprised you remember," Agronak said. "But then, I'm not likely to forget the Elf who killed me. It's no wonder you recognize the Orc who killed _you_. Well. Half-Orc."

Barsabas shook his head. "Fast," he said.

"I knew he died in the Arena," No Claws said slowly. "That's why I chose him. He didn't have a family, and they didn't bury him deep. I didn't realize he'd gotten so far."

"He was good," Agronak said. "Especially at hand to hand. He's still got the scars on his knuckles, see? I don't think my own mother would have recognized me after _that _fight. If that was you, your name would be - "

"Barsabas," the zombie said.

"Only a few minutes?" No Claws said.

"Arena fights are short," Agronak said. "A fight to the death always is."

"I was," Barsabas paused, struggling for words. "Too slow." He lowered his head, looking at the Orc from behind a curtain of dark hair. "I'm not slow now," he said.

"I believe you," Agronak said. "You don't look like the other zombies I've seen."

"He's not like the others," No Claws said. "He's special. I spent _hours _finding the right incantations, and embalming him, and teaching him how to talk again. All right, that part didn't take long. He's smart, too. For a zombie." She looked proudly up at the dead man. "Not a lot of apprentices could do something like that," she said.

"Some of them would have thought about whether they should," Agronak said. "This is why they threw you out of the University? For summoning a zombie?"

"Dotards," No Claws said. Her tail twitched in fresh anger at the memory. "Wicked old fool of an archmage. They tried to make me perform the Rites of Arkay myself, can you believe it? They said if they ever caught me summoning him again they would _kill _me. Kill a student! For doing spells!"

"I won't go," Barsabas said, apparently recognizing some part of the diatribe he'd heard a number of times now.

"That's right," No Claws said. She patted his trembling shoulder gently. "You're a fighter. It's why I chose you."

"I don't believe this," Agronak said, and turned back toward the other room. No Claws hurried after him with Barsabas at her side. "And I already know what LoAmai is going to say..."

---

"Ha," the Dremora said. It was a sound without much humor, but with considerable grim satisfaction. She sat up marginally straighter, inspecting the Argonian and the zombie. "At least she is summoning her own kind."

"Hmph," Agronak said. He held out his hands toward the fire, watching the others. The zombie seemed uncomfortable around the flame, edging back behind the Argonian as he eyed LoAmai.

"Dremora," Barsabas said. "Bad."

"And he is already cleverer than either of you," LoAmai said.

"I shouldn't have expected a Dremora to have any respect for the dead," Agronak said.

"The dead have their uses," LoAmai said. "Why let them go to waste?"

Agronak tried to think of something to say to the sheer effrontery of this and came up short. He made a disgusted noise instead.

"You're in no position to talk," No Claws said. "_You've _been dead, remember? I'm still not sure you're not dead now."

"If I were, you'd still be frozen," Agronak said.

No Claws opened her mouth, then shut it. After a second she said, "I suppose that's true."

"You really have no shame at all, do you," Agronak said. "I mean, I expect that from LoAmai. She's a demon. But I'd have thought an Argonian would at least have some sm - "

A booted footstep rang out on stone somewhere above them. Agronak closed his mouth and drew his new sword at the same instant.

_Wonderful, _he thought glumly. _Now who in the bowels of Dagon is _this?


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

The Imperial Legionnaire Aquila swore silently. The set of Torieni's big shoulders was apologetic, but that was no good – not in a dark cave with who-knew-what down at the bottom of this narrow corridor. The torch in Torieni's hand was bad enough. _I might – might – be able to make my way through here alone in the dark, _Aquila thought._ Not with these two. I swear if he makes one more sound I'm really going to break one of the Commands and strangle him with my bare fingers. _It wasn't completely Torieni's fault that he had no leathern shoes for stealth. They weren't standard issue for anyone but a woodsman like Aquila. But the Captain had brought an extra pair on general principles, and it was Aquila's considered opinion that Torieni, if he'd been thinking at all, should have had them as well.

Aquila froze, hand on the shaft of his bow, as an Orc appeared down at the bottom of the hall. _Appeared _was the right word – one moment he wasn't there, and the next he was. _There was no spell-glow, so he wasn't invisible. He just moved very, very quickly, _Aquila recognized grimly.

Beside him, the Captain shifted forward onto the balls of his feet, though he did not yet reach for his sword. _He saw it, too. _The Orc already held a silver longsword in his hand. His clothes were plain leather, and he had no shield. _He's not so big, for an Orc, _Aquila thought. For some reason, it was not a reassuring thought. His mind kept traveling back to a set of deep footprints. Footprints spaced wide apart, for a running man.

"Who are you?" the Orc said. The sound was not particularly hostile. _It worries me more that he doesn't seem too concerned that there are three of us, _Aquila thought.

"I'm Captain Paulus Eutychus of the Imperial Legion," the Captain said. "We're looking for a Dremora."

"Are you, now?" the Orc said. He did not sheath the sword. "I wasn't, but I found one. You can come in or not. I'm not making any promises."

"Captain," Aquila said very quietly. "Look at his eyes." They gave back a faint blue light under Torieni's torch.

"Divines," the Captain said. "A vampire."

"Can't be," Torieni protested, also quietly. "He ran all day, remember? He'd be dust."

"We're coming in," the Captain said.

"You'll see me, and a Dremora, and an Argonian and a Human. Don't get excited and do anything stupid," the Orc said. Then he was gone as quickly as he'd appeared. _You have to say this for Torieni_, Aquila thought. _He's not a coward_. The stocky man started resolutely down the hallway the moment the Captain gave him the nod. Aquila stalked after him, trying not wince at the clang of Torieni's boots.

"Torieni," the Captain said. "We get out of here, you're getting some leathern shoes."

"Yes, _sir,_" Torieni said feelingly.

"We shouldn't go in, Sir," Aquila said. "It's probably some kind of ambush."

"Aquila. Refer to your previous instructions."

"Shutting up now, Sir."

Torieni stepped out into the cavern first, shield upraised. His armored body blocked Aquila's view of the room beyond for a moment, then he stepped aside. "What do you know," Torieni said. "He wasn't lying."

Aquila went next, an arrow nocked to his bow but not drawn. There was a fire on the other side of the little river channel that bisected the room. He avoided looking at the blinding flame as he scanned the cavern. The Orc stood off slightly to one side, sword still drawn. A Dremora with a coat but no breastplate sat on a blanket roll near the fire. From Aquila's angle, it appeared to have a splint made from a daedric greave on its left leg. The creature watched him with a lordly sneer, just like every Dremora Aquila had ever seen.

A tall Human and a small Argonian stood very close together on the other side of the fire. The Argonian wore baggy and layered robes, but a couple of things were very clear. _He said an Argonian. He didn't say a teenage girl, _Aquila thought with dawning dismay. She held onto the Human's elbow with one hand, though whether seeking reassurance or providing it was not clear. There was something not quite right about the man, who swayed slightly back and forth as he watched Aquila enter the room. _A sick man, or an idiot. Perhaps both, _Aquila thought, looking at his clouded eyes.

_The Orc's skin looks funny in this light. Greyish._

"Clear, Sir," Aquila managed. The Captain came in after him. He did not draw his sword as he looked around, but that meant nothing. _I've seen him draw a sword faster than I could nock an arrow, and I'm not slow_. Aquila watched him closely, but his expression was hard to read behind the nasal of his helmet.

"It seems my woodsman was right," the Captain said. "Though I can't imagine how we missed the other two sets of tracks."

Aquila quirked his lips downward and kept his mouth closed. He could almost _hear _Torieni grinning.

"We met them here," the Orc said. "The necromancers were holding them prisoner."

"What necromancers?" the Captain said.

"The ones I buried in that mound you saw on your way in here," the Orc said blandly. "They were keeping the girl in a cage. It's still there, back in the other room. Feel free to have a look."

"He doesn't talk like an Orc," Torieni muttered. "Except maybe that one priest who lives in - "

"I've given you my name," the Captain said. Aquila smiled to himself as he heard Torieni's teeth click together. "Why don't you give me yours?"

"You've gone to a lot of trouble tracking me all the way here, right?" the Orc said. "Maybe you already know who I am."

Aquila narrowed his eyes, studying the Orc's face. It didn't seem familiar. But the line of his shoulders was a little higher on the right, the arm a little bulkier on that side. _Where a fighting man would most often hold a weapon_. The scars around his eyes and nose and cheekbones were the kind you got from having your face pulped to the bone by a living fist.

"There aren't too many gray Orcs in Cyrodiil," Aquila said softly.

"No," the Captain said. "There aren't. You know," he said musingly, as if to himself. "I heard the Gray Prince turned out to be the son of a vampire? I heard he died in the Arena. You'd think they'd have buried him with a stake in his heart."

"No one seems to have thought of that," said the Orc who was evidently Agronak gro-Malog. "Since I'm only half vampire, I'm not completely sure it would have worked. A stake in the heart will kill most things, of course. But then, so will cold silver."

"I've seen you fight," the Captain said. "I won a little money on you once, back when you were twenty or so."

"The Captain always was a smart man," Torieni said from beside Aquila. "Smarter than me, anyway. I took his bet, three to one. Lost a hundred and fifty septims."

Agronak gro-Malog had not moved since Aquila first entered the room. _Not a single twitch. _He stood with his sword held low, apparently relaxed. _But he's got his back to the fire and the light's in our eyes._

"You're looking at a little more than a hundred and fifty septims here," Agronak said.

"Mm hmm," the Captain said. "And I've got a good memory, Mr. gro-Malog. I'd just as soon not see again what I saw that day. We're not here after you. We came looking for a Dremora."

"And I'd just as soon not have to deal with three Legionnaires in heavy armor," the Gray Prince said. "What exactly did you plan to do with her?"

From the corner of his eye, Aquila saw the Argonian's head jerk sideways to stare. The Dremora did not take its gleaming eyes from the Captain. It seemed a strange thing, when Aquila came to think of it later on. _She already knew._

"The late unpleasantness wasn't the kind of war where prisoners are taken," the Captain said. "We'll hand it over to the Mages' Guild. They won't treat it badly."

"How do you feel about that?" the Orc said, without turning his head. The Dremora made a sound, a harsh rumble deep in its chest. It was not a feminine sound. It wasn't even a human one. Somewhere in it was a metallic grinding, like a sword scraped across a ragged stone.

"Subtle as _her _communication normally is, I could be wrong," Agronak said. "But I think I correctly interpret that as meaning she would rather die. She doesn't like mages."

"_She _is a demon," the Captain said. "There is no one she likes. There's no one she loves. If she has any loyalties, they're to Dagon and to her own people. I don't know what she's told you, but I can see you're not an idiot. Do you really think her word is good?"

Agronak laughed quietly, a single short exhalation. "You know what the sad thing is, Captain? She keeps telling me I _am _an idiot, and I'm starting to believe it. But she's saved my life at least once. I've been killing people for a living for fifteen years, and I don't know anybody else in the entire world who's done that. If you want her, you'll have to kill me. And I won't go alone."

Then the Argonian girl spoke, her higher voice echoing off the walls. "This has gone on long enough. Males and your silly posturing are the whole reason why - "

Aquila was still looking at Agronak, waiting for the Orc to move. He never saw the paralysis spell coming.

Neither, unfortunately, did the Captain.

Torieni was just plain too slow.

---

"What have you done?" Agronak said, approaching the prone soldiers slowly. He could see they were still breathing, but the glow of greenish magicka had faded.

"I paralyzed them," No Claws said. She stood slightly hunched, very close to the fire. Barsabas watched her anxiously, an expression that would normally be impossible for a zombie. "And whatever you plan to do with them, you'd better do it fast, because it's only going to last five minutes. I wouldn't even have _that _much magicka if I hadn't used that potion I found on Araloch. My head is killing me."

"I suppose there is no point in my making the logical suggestion," LoAmai said.

Agronak snorted as he sheathed his sword. "These are _Legionnaires. _If they don't come back, someone _will _come looking for them." He prodded the Captain with his foot. "You think this man won't have told anyone where he was going? Not a chance."

"Then give me the tall one's bow and his quiver," LoAmai said. "I do not know when I will be able to summon again."

Agronak debated whether he was willing to steal from the Legion. _I'm not going to kill them. I think that's about as much as they're getting from me today. _"Fair enough."

Agronak removed the tracker's weapons and set them aside. Then he seized the Captain by one armored leg and arm and hoisted him up onto his shoulders. The Imperial wasn't any heavier than LoAmai in Daedric armor, but a completely limp weight is always harder to manage. The man's scabbard kept jabbing Agronak in the kidneys. "We'll put them in that hole in the other room," he said.

"Barsabas," No Claws said. The zombie ran lightly across the bridge and seized the taller of the two remaining men. Agronak, watching from the corner of his eye, was a little startled at the ease with which he lifted the paralyzed Human. _But then, zombies are strong. You knew that. It's just bizarre to see one that can actually run without staggering._

_Speaking of which. _Agronak turned and ran across the bridge and into the other room. He set the Captain down outside the secret room and went inside to carefully lift the wine rack. None of the bottles fell out as he moved it outside and set it on the cavern floor. _This way they ought to all fit. _None of the three Legionnaires was unusually tall for their short, broad race, though the tracker was taller than the other two. All of them were bigger in their armor. _And I don't have time to get it off them._

He dragged the Captain inside and propped him against one wall. The man's head sagged onto one shoulder, green eyes watching without expression from under his helmet. Agronak turned to see Barsabas outside the door.

"Put him next to the other one," Agronak said, and ran to get the third man. He returned to find the zombie still outside the door, swaying slightly as he watched the frozen Legionnaires. Agronak deposited the third man, backed out of the hole, and pressed the catch. The door swung shut, trapping the Imperials inside in the dark.

"Thank you," he said to Barsabas.

"You're welcome," the dead man said with startling clarity. Then he stiffened, turning toward the other room. "No Claws?" he said. A yellow aura sprang up around him, and he dissolved into a shower of sparks.

Agronak ran back into the other cavern. LoAmai was almost lying on her side, leaning far over as she dragged No Claws out of the edge of the firepit. Agronak darted forward, slid to his knees, and beat out the corner of the Argonian's robe that had caught fire. The smell of burnt cloth was choking, even in the open cavern.

"What happened?" Agronak said. LoAmai surveyed the unconscious Argonian with studied disinterest.

"She collapsed," she said. "I assume it is too much to hope for that she is dead?"

"If you wanted her dead, why'd you pull her out of the fire?" Agronak said. He moved No Claws over onto a bedroll. She did not seem to have been burned, but she didn't stir, either.

"I am your debtsworn," the Dremora said, as one stating the obvious. "You want her alive, do you not? Or have you changed your mind?"

"I have _not _changed my mind," Agronak said severely. LoAmai grinned, white teeth in her darkly mottled face.

"Perhaps she is a useful krynvelhat to know. You would have had to kill the soldiers otherwise."

"I notice you don't seem to have any problem with _that _reasoning," Agronak said.

"As you said, others would look for them." The Dremora examined her yellow nails with annoyance. The ends were scorched, but her hand seemed unharmed. "Whatever your inclination may be, I wish to live. It seems unlikely, given that neither I nor the Argonian can presently leave this cavern."

"She shouldn't have taken that potion," Agronak said. "Some of that swill will boost your magicka and drain the life out of you. I've seen it happen in the Arena." He stood up, looking around the cavern for inspiration. _LoAmai's right. We can't stay here, or we're in the same position as if we'd killed those three. Besides, they'll find the catch on the inside of that door, even in the dark. Especially the tracker-man, unless I miss my guess. _"Divines," Agronak muttered. "If the zombie were still here, he could carry her, but he disappeared when she passed out. I could carry you both, but I'd be slow, and being slung like a flour sack wouldn't do your leg any good either."

"I agree," LoAmai said.

"That's very helpful," Agronak muttered. "I doubt I could outrun a good horse on my b - " He stopped. "Of _course. _They didn't come here on foot, they can't have. I'll be right back." He jogged across the bridge and up the cavern hall to the door. It was slightly open, letting dim gray light in. It was raining outside. Agronak listened carefully before he stuck his head out.

Three horses stood under a tree not ten yards away. None of them were armored, possibly because the Legionnaires had wanted them at top speed. All three were glossy black. Agronak knew about as much about horses as he did about woodcraft, but everyone knew you couldn't beat the Legion's black horses for speed. _And if they can carry a human in heavy armor, they can carry me easily. Assuming I can get more than a few yards without falling off._

"That'll be the problem, yes," muttered Agronak. _Maybe I can make some sort of litter from the tables down below and run next to them, instead._

"Good news," he said as he reentered the cavern. "In addition to being a traitor and a fugitive, I'm about to become a horse thief." He snagged the bow and quiver on his way past them and dropped them in LoAmai's lap. She inspected the bow critically as she said,

"A thief of what?"

"Horses," Agronak said. "You've seen them. There were some dead ones on that battlefield. They're as tall as I am and they have four hooves and a tail."

"I will not be able to ride one," LoAmai said. She strapped the quiver on over her coat, then tightened the strap.

"That makes two of us," Agronak said. "Don't worry. I have a plan. I don't have the faintest idea where we'll go from here, though."

The Dremora watched him cross the cavern toward the tables. "I will be interested to find out," she said.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," said Agronak gro-Malog.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

_I'm not using the word _idiot _intending to be offensive to the mentally challenged, who probably won't be reading this anyway, but that mostly is what they were called in medieval times and a PC phrase just wouldn't fit._

"Now it sounds like he's hammering something, Sir," Aquila said. He stood with his ear pressed to the wall that presumably held the door, so his voice was slightly muffled. The Captain heard his fingers rasping the stone as he felt for a catch. "I wonder what he's using?"

"Didn't you see the tables when he was carrying us in here?" the Captain said tiredly. He rubbed his face, the gesture hidden from the others in the dark. "They weren't made by a carpenter. Whoever was living here had nails, at the very least."

"But what's he building?" said Torieni's voice. The Captain felt Torieni's shoe nudge his foot. The other man muttered an apology. The room was tall enough for them to stand upright, except for Aquila, but there wasn't much floor space. It had taken them some minutes just to disentangle themselves from each other.

"He's got to get the Dremora out of here somehow," Aquila said. "She won't be able to ride with a broken leg, even if one of the horses would carry her. And you know how they usually react to daedra."

Torieni swore bitterly. "Yes, and I remember how long it took me to train that horse, too. Well, he can't get far pulling a litter. We'll catch him up when we get out of here - "

"No," the Captain said.

"Sir?" Aquila said.

"We're not going to follow them, Aquila," the Captain said calmly. "When we get out of here, we are going straight back to the others, and then I am going to write a letter to the City Watch commander at Bravil."

"We could catch them, Sir," Aquila said.

"I _like _that horse," Torieni said.

"We might," the Captain said. "And then what?" He listened to the thoughtful silence as the other two considered this. "I wasn't joking with what I said out there. I really don't want to face Agronak gro-Malog with a sword in his hand, particularly not with a mage."

"I had the man picked out as some sort of idiot," Torieni said in a voice of deep embarrassment.

"It wasn't him," Aquila said. "It was that girl. I saw it before she got me. It's hardly any more likely, though, is it? Who can cast that kind of spell three times at that age?"

"It doesn't matter," the Captain said. "What matters is that she did it, and she can most likely do it again. If they want to get anywhere from here with a litter, they'll have to go South – it's the only thing the terrain allows. If they don't want to starve to death, they'll have to find other people sooner or later. I doubt Agronak gro-Malog is much of a hunter."

"Sir," Torieni said. "They could do a lot of damage between here and Bravil."

"They could," the Captain said. "But they won't. Whatever the others' inclination is, Agronak won't allow it. My impression is that he's not a bad Orc, but he's found himself in a bad spot. Anyway, his days are numbered. He won't get far with a Dremora and a mage and an idiot - "

"Not an idiot," Aquila said. "A zombie."

The Captain stared at the spot in the absolute darkness from which Aquila's voice had come. He suspected Torieni of doing the same.

"Oh, come now," the Captain said. "I saw his eyes, but surely - "

"He was carrying me, Sir," Aquila said. "I can vouch for the fact that one, he's colder than an Argonian, and two, he doesn't breathe. He stinks like liquor, too. I'm guessing someone embalmed him."

"When a mage dies, their summoned creatures disappear. So there was either another necromancer hiding somewhere in that cave..." the Captain said.

"Or the girl is a necromancer," Torieni said. "a really good one. You'd think we'd have heard of somebody like that, Sir."

"Not if she's as young as she looked," the Captain said.

"I don't like it, Sir," Aquila said.

"Neither do I," said the Captain. "Does anyone else have a different suggestion?"

The dark room fell abruptly silent.

"I thought not. Any luck finding that catch yet, Aquila?"

---

"You seem awfully calm, for a war horse," Agronak said. The big black snorted and went on cropping grass. Agronak surveyed his makeshift travois with something less than complete satisfaction. _You'd think even I could come up with a big flat thing easily enough. _It _was_ big and flat, having previously been a pair of tabletops. The trouble was that it listed to one side. He'd attached it to two horses, and one was a little taller than the other. Agronak hadn't figured out how to adjust his equally cobbled-together harness properly. _Best we can do, for now. At least I found some actual nails so I know it's not going to just fall apart._

By dint of considerable swearing, he'd got everything else he thought they might need loaded onto Horse Number Three. _I wonder if I ought to bring a couple of the wine bottles. _He'd never been much of a drinker, back before it became a moot point. In the Arena, a hangover could kill you. _But it might help the others against the cold, and I haven't tasted anything but water and... that in a long time. _

"Don't go anywhere," he said. The big black horse looked at him in a way that struck him as more than a little sarcastic and went on eating. Agronak jogged back down into the cavern and into the back room. The Legionnaires were still inside the tiny compartment. He could hear them speaking, though the words were muffled. Agronak went to the wine rack and inspected the rows of bottles. _I doubt we'll need two dozen of the things. _Agronak removed a bottle from the rack and worked the wire around the stopper. The glass felt oddly slick, but the stopper popped out easily enough.

He sniffed at the neck of the bottle, then stiffened as his knees tried to buckle. Why hadn't he noticed that the glass was warm, before?

The sensation passed after a second. Agronak took a second cautious whiff at the bottle. There was no mistake. _That's not wine. And it smells like it's still alive. _He didn't think to consider whose blood it might be before he drank it. He didn't think of anything at all until it was gone. Then he let the bottle drop as he argued with himself. _Whoever it was, there's nothing I can do for them now. _

The bottle hit the ground with a short _clink. _Agronak twitched, then turned to look at it. It had not shattered on the stone. He picked up the vessel and looked it over. It was still completely intact, and further, the smell of blood had completely faded from the glass. _More magic. Wonderful. I suppose it makes sense that diviners would find a way to keep it vein-fresh so they'd still have it when their latest victim ran out of steam._

And yet...

_If I took all these with us and split them with LoAmai, I wouldn't have to hunt for twelve days. If I can get by on half a bottle a day, I can make it last almost a month. That's worth something. For that matter, I ought to be able to find a use for an indestructible bottle, too._

He found a length of string, tied the wires of the twenty-three bottles together, and ran them upstairs to the pack horse. He took the other one to the stream to fill it with water. LoAmai watched him.

"We've had what I suppose I should consider a stroke of luck," Agronak said over his shoulder. "The necromancers have been storing blood in wine bottles, and there's some kind of preservation enchantment on them."

"So it can be done in this plane," LoAmai said.

"You mean people do it in Oblivion?"

"I am not sure the word _people _is right, but yes. Blood flows in living fountains there, without thickening and without rotting. I know no enchantments, but I saw it done."

Agronak stoppered the bottle, tied it to his belt, and went to kneel beside the Dremora. "Are you ready to go?"

He'd expected something sarcastic, but all she said was, "Yes." Agronak picked her up carefully, took her upstairs, and set her in the blanket nest he'd made on the travois. He'd set the tabletops upside down, so the lower rims would help keep things from falling off. Then he went back for No Claws.

The Argonian stirred when the cold air hit her face. Agronak laid her next to LoAmai and pulled the blankets up around her. The Dremora watched without expression.

"There's something I need you to do," Agronak said.

"I will see that she does not fall off," LoAmai said. "Nor freeze to death." She didn't sound happy, but at least she seemed resigned. She sat with her face turned away from the West and the afternoon's faint sun. The rain had stopped.

"Good. Thank you."

"Do you yet know where we will go?" LoAmai said.

Agronak shrugged. "There's only one way level enough for this thing." He nudged the travois with his foot. "It's all grass. Maybe it'll spring back and we'll be harder to track."

"I doubt it," LoAmai said. She adjusted the strap of her bow as she sat as upright as possible. "Unfortunate that this _krynvelhat _is a dead-raiser and likely cannot heal. I could fight better with the use of both my legs."

"Isn't that always the way," Agronak said. "Sure you wouldn't just kill me and run off?"

"Certainly. Where to?" LoAmai said.

"Good point," Agronak said, and slapped each horse lightly on the rump. They started off at a slow trot. The pack horse perforce went with them, since he'd tied its reins to one of the others. He didn't even have to turn them. There was only direction without trees in the way.

Agronak jogged along through the gray afternoon, trying to listen to everything around him. A city had a lot of small sounds, and you learned to distinguish man from horse from cart without even thinking about it. Agronak could listen to a man practicing with a sword and tell you when he was fresh, or tired, or angry, or discouraged, just by the way his feet fell. _But that's no good out here. _He could pick out different noises, but he had no idea what they were. _Birds, sure. But what birds are they?_

Eventually he heard No Claws groan. Agronak tugged on each horse's reins until they slowed to a walk. He supposed there was a verbal way to do it, but he didn't know what it was. "Slow down, horse" seemed wrong, somehow. He dropped back beside the travois. The Argonian lay curled up on her side, clutching her head with one arm. She was using the other one to hold the blankets around her as tightly as possible.

"No Claws?" Agronak said.

"Please tell me we're moving up and down," she said.

"In a way, yes," Agronak said.

"I think I might throw up," No Claws said.

"Then I suggest you resist, or I will push you off," LoAmai said. The Argonian groaned inarticulately and tugged the blanket up over her eyes. Only the end of her snout protruded, gray against the yellow homespun.

"Why did you do it?" Agronak said.

"Do what?" said No Claws' muffled voice.

"Paralyze those Legionnaires. Why not me and LoAmai? I wasn't expecting it. You could always scream for help and they'd take you wherever you wanted."

"Possibly _because _you weren't expecting it," No Claws said. "Possibly also because they might begin to suspect me when Barsabas disappeared. These things have a way of getting back to the Guild. I don't suppose we have any water?"

"Here." Agronak handed her the bottle of water. She fumbled the stopper out and sniffed at it.

"There is an enchantment on this," she said.

"I think it's just a preservative," Agronak said. "It had blood in it before."

"And you are of course the expert on necromancy," No Claws said. She took a drink anyway. "Araloch's work. No petty enchanter could do it." She stoppered the bottle and handed it back. Agronak reattached it to a saddle and walked along beside the travois for a while. Eventually No Claws stuck her head all the way out again and said,

"I'm afraid I told you a lie earlier."

Agronak considered and discarded several possible responses to this before saying, "About what?"

"My parents didn't throw me out when I was sixteen."

"Really," Agronak said.

"My father left me at an orphanage just after I hatched," No Claws said. "So my mother wouldn't smother me. It was run by Imperials, and by the time the only other Argonian was old enough to know, I was gone. The Archivist at the University knew it, but I didn't know that until it was too late. How would I know? No one had ever told me. I had to steal one of her books to find out."

"To find out about what?" Agronak said.

"About my name," No Claws said. "It's not just another obvious Argonian name. It's a warning." She held up one hand, then tucked it quickly back under the blankets. "The People of the Marsh set great store by birth signs. A child hatched under the Shadow makes an assassin, a child under the Tower makes a guard or a councilor. I was hatched under the sign of the Apprentice with unclawed fingers. Such a one is always a necromancer."

"And they'd smother you for _that?" _Agronak said.

"I would," LoAmai said. Agronak ignored her.

"It's not as if necromancy is actually illegal," he said.

"It's more than that. It is an evil portent," No Claws said. "No good can come of such a child. Better to be an assassin and take lives than a magus who raises the dead. One is part of the natural order of things. One is not."

"I can't fathom that reasoning," Agronak said.

"You're not Argonian," No Claws said glumly.

"Very true," Agronak said. "It's going to start raining again. We'll have to find something with a roof soon."

LoAmai looked around at the wide field of grass they were traversing. "And how do you intend to do that, Orc of Nirn?"

Agronak rolled his eyes. "At the very least, try and cover your heads. That's all I'd need, one of you getting sick out here." _Stopping is probably a bad idea anyway. I don't think the Captain will try and follow us on foot, but I don't know how long it will take him to find other Legionnaires._

The Orc and the horses walked on through the dimming afternoon.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

It started to rain as evening was drawing on. Agronak led the horses on through the frigid drizzle until they found a burnt-out hut. It barely had a roof and one wall was missing, but it was better than nothing. They spent an uncomfortable evening with the strong smell of horse, but it was warm. Agronak fell asleep looking at LoAmai, an unbending shape outlined against the tiny fire.

He woke up when the rising sun struck his face. It was pale and thin, a mere streak between the clouds, but he still flinched away from the light in his eyes. The fire was out.

"So the Dremora was telling the truth," No Claws said.

Agronak sat up, rubbing his eyes. "I don't know that I've ever heard her lie," he said. "Unless she has a lot more imagination that I've been giving her credit for."

"I doubt it," LoAmai said. She looked thinner than when he had first met her, and a little tired. Her skin color did not admit of any circles under her eyes, but the space under her eyelids seemed swollen.

"Do all vampires do that?" No Claws said. She rummaged through a saddlebag, picking out pieces of dried fruit. "Die only when they sleep?"

"I think vampires are dead all the time," Agronak said. "But I've never met one that I know of, so I couldn't really tell you. Did anything happen last night, LoAmai?"

"No," LoAmai said.

"Are you feeling all right?"

"I thirst."

"Breakfast. Right." Agronak scrambled upright and disentangled a bottle of blood from the others. He handed it to the kynval, then went to splash water on his face from a broken half-barrel. He had to break a thin scum of ice on the surface. The horses had wandered out to what was left of a trough and were drinking noisily.

"I wonder how far we've gotten," Agronak said, drying his hands on his trousers.

"Not far enough," No Claws said. "Today I will ride. We'll be faster."

"You can ride?"

"Tar-meena taught me," No Claws said. "The Archivist. I thought she was being helpful at the time. Now I suspect she just wanted me where she could watch me."

Agronak chuckled silently. "Who wouldn't?"

"Yes, well. Fortunately you have an armed Dremora to protect you from any nefarious intent of mine. I wish I could say the same," No Claws said dryly. Behind her, LoAmai snorted.

"Oh, so we're back to that again, are we? Why do you think I brought all these bottles with us?" Agronak said.

"In case you ran out of Argonian?"

"Clearly, you've recovered from yesterday," Agronak said. "You're a necromancer. I'm half-vampire. That ought to make us two of a kind, oughtn't it?"

"You've heard the proverb about honor among thieves?" No Claws said.

"As it happens, no. But then, you have two more years' education than I ever had."

"Yet you still speak like a gentleman," No Claws said. She began rolling up blankets and stacking them on the travois. "It must be your vampire blood."

"It sure as Oblivion isn't the Orcish," Agronak said.

"Do you ever go berserk?" No Claws said.

"No."

"What, never?"

"Not even once," Agronak said. He dragged the travois outside, then went to get LoAmai and set her on it. "And I've fought Orcs who did, so believe me, I'd know. At the time I thought it was because I was half Human. Ha."

"It can't be that effective," No Claws said. "You're still alive."

"Ha," Agronak said again, with even less humor than the first time. "You don't know how many times I've had my ribs broken. My arm, once, too. That was a near thing. I think I was about your age."

"I broke my tail, once," No Claws said.

"How?"

The response was inaudible. "I didn't quite catch that," Agronak said.

"Falling off a horse," No Claws muttered.

"You sure you want to ride today?"

"It only happened once," No Claws said, in the tone of injured dignity know to seventeen-year-olds everywhere.

---

Somewhat to Agronak's surprise, No Claws did not fall off the horse. He increased their pace for a couple of hours, but slowed down again when he noticed LoAmai seemed to be gritting her teeth. She said nothing to the change. In fact, she seemed quieter than usual. After a while he dropped back beside the travois and asked,

"Are you all right?"

"Yes," LoAmai said. Her skin seemed a little darker, as if she were flushed behind the splotches, but it was hard to tell. Agronak considered what he knew about Dremoras. It seemed very unlikely that admitting to discomfort was a rewarded behavior in Oblivion.

"I'm not going to leave you behind," he said. "That's not one of the possibilities. But you're looking ill, and if there's anything we can do about it, I need to know."

"There is nothing you can do," LoAmai said.

"Any chance your leg is infected?"

"It feels no different from before," she said. "Leave me alone." Agronak jogged back up beside No Claws.

"I don't suppose you know any herbcraft?" he said.

"A little," No Claws said warily. "Why?"

"Any idea what to do for a Dremora with a fever?"

"I had no idea Dremora could become ill," she said.

"This isn't her plane," Agronak said. "It's too cold for her here."

"It's nearly too cold for _me,_" No Claws said. "But I know only how to preserve. I don't know how to heal."

"I was afraid of that. Lavender's no good against fever," Agronak said.

"I'm sorry," No Claws said.

Agronak shrugged. "It's not your f - "

"Wait," No Claws said suddenly. "Did you hear something? Someone shouting?"

Agronak listened. "I did that time," he said. "It sounded like an Elf."

"I don't know how you could - " No Claws said, but Agronak was already gone.

---

The Healer Serano sat up slowly. He shook his head, trying to clear it. He could feel something warm running down the left side of his face where the bandit had struck him, blinding him in that eye. _Steel gauntlets. I've seen them draw blood many a time, _he thought muzzily. Even in his current state, he knew exactly what shape the mark must be. There was no point in trying to heal himself. They'd only hit him again.

"That's no good," one of the three bandits was saying. The Dunmer, probably. Serano was seeing double now and consequently was not quite sure. "There's nobody to hear you out here, and if you make me mad you'll just make it harder on yourself. Understand?"

Serano tried to answer. A groan came out instead. He tried to get up, but everything tilted sideways and he ended up on his knees.

"I think you hit him too hard," said another sneering voice. _One of the two Imperials. _"High Elves can't take it anyhow, and this here is a _holy _man. Spends his whole day making nice for the Divines."

Someone spat. It hit the ground next to Serano with a _thwap._

"Doesn't matter," said the third. "Get his purse and let's - "

"Hey!" said the Dunmer. "Who are you?"

Serano shook his head again, forcing his eyes to focus. An Orc stood on the edge of the little hollow that hid the bandits' camp from sight. _He must have hit me harder than I thought. That is the palest Orc I've ever seen._

"I don't think it matters, do you?" said the Orc. Silver gleamed in his right hand.

"That's a nice sword you've got there, Mister Orc," said the Dunmer. "Why don't you hand it over and maybe I won't kill you?"

_Give it to them, _Serano pleaded silently. _Three against one is no odds._

"On the whole, I don't think I will," the Orc said.

"Get him," said one of the Imperials. Then several things happened very fast, and Serano didn't see them, because he was busy throwing up. It was odd that he didn't hear any swords clashing. But then, maybe the Orc hadn't managed to put up a fight.

When he finally opened his clean eye again, a pair of leather-clad ankles occupied most of his vision. Serano spat, wiped his mouth, and sat back on his heels. The Orc stood over him, sword sheathed. He wasn't so very big, for an Orc.

"If I heal myself, are you going to strike me again?" Serano said.

"No," the Orc said.

Serano raised his right hand and drew up the magicka. Blue light swirled around him in a double helix. The blood on his face turned to dust and drifted away. The headache went with it. The Orc snapped into clear focus, though he was still a very pale gray-green. Serano's practiced eye traced the shape of scars on his face. _Scars made by Human knuckles, or I miss my guess._

"May I rise?" Serano said.

"Of course," the Orc said. He offered a hand. The Healer accepted it. The Orc hoisted him easily onto his feet. His grip was startling.

"You're quite a strong Orc, for your size," Serano said, shaking his freed hand. He was not too startled to take note of the state of the Orc's knuckles. He brushed his pale hair back from his face. It was fortunate he wore it cropped back to his pointed ears, or it would be revoltingly soiled.

"Sorry," the Orc said.

"Not at all. What of the bandits?" Serano said. He brushed the dust from his brown overcoat and the skirt of his robe.

"They're dead," the Orc said.

"What, all _three _of them? Oh. Yes, I see that they are." Serano knew death when he saw it. There was also the fact that the Dunmer had been decapitated. The Healer looked back at the Orc, belatedly cautious. He was squinting in the dim daylight – _Odd, that _- but his eyes were still easily distinguished. _How very unusual, to see blue eyes on that race. _"It seems I am in your debt. My name is Serano. I'm a Healer. I was on my way to the Chapel of Mara at Bravil, and I seem to have taken an inappropriate shortcut. They were just about to relieve me of my purse, and I'm afraid they didn't take kindly to my calling for help."

"It's a good thing you did," The Orc said. "We barely heard you."

"We?" Serano said. "Will you excuse my having a drink?" He looked around, located his hip flask lying on the ground, and picked it up. The Orc made no move to stop him.

"Be my guest. The other two are with the horses," the Orc said. "My friend is ill, and she has a broken leg. Could you help her?"

Serano swilled the mouthful of brandy around his mouth and spat it out. "Bring me to the lady," he said. "I will do whatever is within my power."

The Orc hesitated, shifting his weight slightly. "You're a Chapel healer, right? That means you'll heal anyone?"

"Yes," Serano said. "To withhold blessing belongs to the Divines, not to their servants. Is your friend an outlaw?"

"Not exactly," the Orc said. "That's... Ah... That's a little nearer what I am, Healer. Is there anything these men have that you want?"

"What? No," Serano said.

"All right, then." The Orc didn't stop to search the bodies, but Serano noticed that he seemed to have two purses on his belt. _He must have moved very quickly. _It also had not escaped the Altmer's notice that his rescuer had not given his name. _If he is an outlaw, perhaps he intends to let me live and he doesn't wish his identity known. Of course, one doesn't see many blue-eyed Orcs, does one?_

Serano climbed out of the hollow after the outlaw. A hundred yards or so away, three horses trotted toward them. Two were pulling what seemed to be a rough litter. A small person in a hooded robe rode the third. As they approached, he saw the scaly muzzle of an Argonian poking out from under the hood. It was gray. Patches of green were visible when the – _Woman? Girl? - _turned her head. She reined up a few feet from the Orc and the Altmer.

"There you are, Agronak," she said. "Where did you go?"

"The _Healer _here was being attacked by bandits," the Orc called Agronak said. He laid an odd emphasis on the word. _A warning, _Serano thought.

"And what became of the bandits?" the Argonian said in a cautious tone.

"They went the way of all flesh," the Orc said. "She's on the travois here." Serano followed him around behind the horses. The litter seemed to have been cobbled together in a hurry from a pair of tables, and on it sat...

"Mara Mother Mild," Serano said, very quietly. "I know no man or mer who would cry friends with a daedra."

"Then it's fortunate for me that I'm neither of those things," Agronak said. The Dremora opened its – _her? -_ mouth, but the Orc interrupted without even looking at her. "I'll try and explain what _friend _means later, all right?"

"I know what it means," the Dremora said. Her voice grated up and down Serano's nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard, but he did not miss the fact that the gaunt creature held a bow gripped tightly in one hand. "What is this?"

"This is the Healer Serano," Agronak said. "Will you let him look at your leg?"

The Dremora growled something indistinguishable, then said, "He is Aedryn. He serves the enemies of those I served."

"I'll be watching him," the Orc said. The Dremora surveyed Serano with a curled lip.

"I will permit it," she said.

Serano knelt beside the litter, laying his staff aside. He had treated injured warriors before, and not all of them had fought on the side of the law. In Serano's not-entirely-humble opinion, a Healer had no right to say _no _to an injured person. _If I'm going to treat a Dremora, I suppose I'd better do it well. There is also the transient fact that I want to go on living, of course. This day gets stranger and stranger._

---

Agronak watched the Elf closely as he examined LoAmai. Age was hard to judge with an Altmer, but he looked to be somewhere in his late thirties or early forties. He had the golden-yellow skin and narrow face common to most Altmer, and his hair was typically pale. There was nothing much to distinguish the Healer Serano from any other Altmer you'd see walking down the streets of the Imperial City. _Except he's not as high in the instep as most of them. That's something, at least._

_He looks fairly sharp, too, but then they generally do. Even the guttersnipes we get in the Arena, and some of them are dumber than bricks._

The Altmer frowned thoughtfully. "How long ago was her leg broken?" he said. He had unbuckled the straps of her left greave, exposing a hard-muscled leg and the narrow length of metal Agronak had tied on as a splint underneath.

"A few days," Agronak said.

"Whomever set it did an excellent job," Serano said. "You've set a broken limb before, Friend Agronak?"

"Once or twice," Agronak said.

"Hm. Well, this would take some time to heal in the normal course of things, but I see no reason to wait. Will you allow me to use a spell, Lady?"

The Dremora looked down her beak of a nose at him. Agronak, recognizing the expression, quashed a smile. "Yes," said LoAmai.

The Altmer closed his eyes and spread out his fingers. Blue light sprang up around the tips, and then he pressed his hands against her leg above and below the knee. The light spread out in a fine web, then sank in slowly and vanished.

Serano opened his eyes. "Does it still hurt?"

"No," LoAmai said.

He withdrew his hands. Agronak noticed, not for the first time, that he was deliberately avoiding sudden movements. "Then let's get that splint off it, shall we?"

"I will do it," LoAmai said. The Elf made a graceful gesture of acquiescence. He remained on his knees, watching the Dremora untie the cords and remove the compressed remains of a second greave. She buckled the intact one back on without fumbling, but the Elf was frowning again.

"Is your temperature normal, for a Dremora?" he said. "You seem rather warm."

"No," LoAmai said.

"I have something for fever," he said. "If the other spell healed you, this one should as well."

"Then proceed," LoAmai said. The Elf held out just one hand this time, and he spoke a word Agronak did not know. The light was dimmer and more diffuse, but it was still quite discernible in the dim day.

LoAmai stood up and stepped off the end of the travois. Agronak was startled to realize that she was almost his height. He'd never seen her standing before. Serano stood up as well, surveying her with clinical detachment. He was taller than either of them.

"That should do very well," he said. "It may need a couple of weeks for the leg to regain its full strength, of course."

LoAmai looked at Agronak, ignoring the Elf. _Amazing. I know no magic whatsoever, but I know _exactly _what she's thinking. _He shook his head slightly. The Altmer picked up his staff without taking his eyes from them.

"Yes, I'm afraid I do present something of a problem for you, don't I?" he said. He glanced back at No Claws, still sitting her horse and watching from under her hood. "I wonder what _her _secret is? It can hardly be more outlandish than this. I can give you my word on my silence, if you like, but I don't suppose it will mean anything under these circumstances."

Agronak shrugged. "It doesn't matter," he said. "By the time you get to anyone, we'll be long gone."

"Yes, we're a long way from the road here," the Altmer said calmly, confirming Agronak's guess. "And Bravil is still a long way South. Then if you permit me, I will be on my way."

"Thank you," Agronak said.

"I hope you will consider my debt repaid," Serano said. "But if you should need the services of a Healer again, my door will never be closed to you. Nor to your... Friend." He nodded toward LoAmai. She looked at him with predatory consideration as she slung her bow over one shoulder. She stood with her weight on one side, favoring the weaker leg, but her spine was very straight.

"You are brave, for a man with no weapon," she said.

"One must be," the Healer said. "In my profession. Good day to you."

"Farewell," LoAmai said. Agronak nodded. The Elf waved courteously at No Claws, then set off Southward with long strides. He did not run. He did not look back. Agronak watched him out of sight.

Then he turned to the others and said, "I don't suppose we need this thing anymore." He prodded the litter with a leathern shoe.

"We'll need the blankets," No Claws said. She swung down out of the saddle. "I'll pack them onto the horses. They seem to prefer me to you, anyway."

"Not surprising," Agronak said. He looked at the Dremora. She looked back at him, eye to eye. "I said earlier I'd never heard you lie," he said. "Are you going to prove me wrong?"

"No, Orc of Nirn," LoAmai said. "I am yet your debtsworn. The more so since you brought the Aedryn to heal me."

"Then let's go back to that camp," he said. "Those three idiots had poor armor, but they had some very nice tents."


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

"Cheap," No Claws said, holding up a pinkish glass bottle. It was perhaps a third the size of a wine bottle, and the glass was translucent.

"How can you tell?" Agronak said. He stood bent over a wooden barrel, rummaging through its contents. _Who keeps a spare set of trousers in a _barrel, _anyway? Hmph. Well. At least I have a use for them._

"The smell," He heard the girl answer. "And what they wanted with a sleeping potion like this one, I can't imagine."

"Probably some poor traveler had it and they just assumed it was worth something," Agronak said. "Did you say sleeping potion? Is there such a thing, really?"

"In a manner of speaking," No Claws said. "It doesn't so much cause you to sleep as it completely drains your energy. I hear it's not at all comfortable."

"So it's not a cure for insomnia," Agronak said. He inspected a skein of dusty yarn, then tossed it aside.

"More of a poison that doesn't kill," No Claws said. "I suppose you never know what will be useful." She set the bottle on the ground beside the small sack of food she'd found. "There's about fifty gold here."

"Keep it," Agronak said. "I got a few hundred off the bandits."

From the corner of his eye he saw No Claws turn to look at the corpses, which still lay where they had fallen. "Are you going to bury them?"

"We don't have time," Agronak said. He straightened, new trousers in hand. "Speaking of which, where's LoAmai?"

"Here," the Dremora's voice said. She rounded one of the remaining two tents, bow in hand. LoAmai walked about like Agronak had expected. Hers was the lordly stalk of one who fears nothing and disdains much, and she made eerily little sound in her heavy boots. Her present slight limp did little to dispel the impression. "Explain to me again why I had to put the tent onto the horse," she said.

"Because No Claws couldn't lift it, and they like me even less than they like you," Agronak said. "Apparently half-Undead is worse than all daedra. Don't ask me why. Ready to go?"

"Yes," LoAmai said. "These were not even competent thieves. They have no weapons worth taking, and the drinking of their blood would merely soil my lips."

"I'm glad to hear it," Agronak said. "No Claws?"

"Ready," the Argonian said. She gathered up her finds and started toward the horses, robe flapping around her thin ankles. "Will we continue South?"

"I think West would be a better idea," Agronak said. "Now that we've dropped the travois, I hope we'll be harder to track. Maybe anyone following us will think we kept on the same way we were going."

"Not if you mean the men in steel armor," LoAmai said. "They are better at tracking than you are at covering your tracks, Orc of Nirn. Even over frozen ground."

"I haven't heard _you _making any useful suggestions."

"This is not my plane," LoAmai said. She watched the Argonian pack up her finds and climb into the saddle.

"And that makes all the difference, does it?" Agronak set off beside the pack horse as No Claws urged her mount into a walk.

"Each time I suggest something useful, you refuse to do it," LoAmai said. He kept an unobtrusive eye on her, but she had no trouble keeping up. If she was breathing hard from a long walk after sitting down for several days, she showed no sign.

"Killing every stranger you meet is eventually going to prove a suicidal behavior here," Agronak said.

"So I gather," LoAmai said. "In Oblivion it is generally considered that the stranger weak enough to be killed deserves to die."

"You'd still be on a litter if I were acting on a similar belief," Agronak said.

"On the contrary. I would be dead on the battlefield," LoAmai said.

"And that doesn't bother you at all?"

LoAmai glanced at him from under black brows. "Why should it?"

---

The Healer Serano had a long and very thoughtful walk the rest of the way to Bravil. It took him some three days, and that was a hard journey on foot and in Frostfall. He was understandably grateful when the stables outside Bravil loomed into sight. This also meant he could smell them, unfortunately, but so many of life's blessings were mixed that he was inclined to be philosophical. The city of Bravil itself, sitting as it did on the river that served it as water supply and sewer system, was known for its smell almost as much as its rundown buildings.

Serano could have gone to another city. He'd had his pick, really. But he saw no sense in going to a place that had enough healers and little need of them, and Bravil was known to be short of its people of the cloth.

He crossed the rickety wooden bridge without pause, though it swayed to and fro in the faint breeze off the reeking canyon beneath. No warrior was Serano, but he had reasonably good balance, and he'd never been afraid of heights. A few more minutes' walking brought him to the doors of the Chapel of Mara.

It looked like many another chapel of the Nine in Tamriel. The square stone hulk was topped by a steeple, and windows of stained glass gleamed in the winter sun. But here the windows were dingy, and the stone walls had been allowed to grow moss and lichen and ivy; effort of man or mer had fallen behind the effect of the damp air.

Serano went up to the heavy wooden door, pushed it carefully open – it creaked alarmingly – and went inside. Two minutes later he had hold of the tired, harried underpriest, and ten minutes after that he was stowing his gear in a small room in the undercroft while a young Breton priestess spoke to him. She looked like the sort of girl who ought to be pleasingly plump, but she was thin, and there were shadows under her eyes. For all that, she still had the brisk energy Serano generally associated with Bretons. She was blond, not quite pretty, and her name was Florien Maladetta.

"We're always busy, Brother Serano," she said. "I came here as a novice last year, and I swear to you I'm twice as good at healing as I was when I got here. It's almost all we do."

"Not many people seek your comfort or council here?" Serano said. "One would think, in such a city as Bravil is rumored to be..."

"People seek their own council, I'm afraid," Sister Florien said in typically clipped Breton accents. "That's rather how they come to require our help, if you take my meaning."

"Indeed."

"And of course recently we'd had the soldiers, but most of them are healed or passed on by now. Just as well. The Senior Brother was down to the barracks and back so many times I day I thought his feet would drop off, you know. I understand some of them are setting out again, but I hear it's after some fugitive. Hardly likely to require our help. May I help you fold that, Brother?"

"Thank you, I'm fine. A fugitive, did you say?"

Sister Florien fidgeted with her sleeves as she watched him fold his one spare robe and set it aside. Serano, with an attention to mannerism that was typical of him, had instantly pegged her as one whose hems would always be frayed, whose nails would always be bitten, and whose hair would be constantly tucked behind her ears because it fretted her when it swung forward. _She probably has insomnia as well. Her mind will not be still long enough for her to sleep._

"Yes, I heard it from one of the servants who work in the Castle and cleans the barracks," Florien said candidly. "She comes to me for, ahem, female troubles every so often. She said the Captain got a letter from the Imperial Legion saying this Orc might be headed this way, and he's always champing at the bit to get out of Bravil for any reason at all, not that one can precisely blame him - "

"An Orc?" said Serano carefully.

"What, you haven't heard, Brother? No, of course not, you've only just arrived, haven't you? Silly me. It's rather a startling piece of news. It seems the Gray Prince turned out not to be dead after all."

Serano, a mer utterly disinterested in blood sports except where they impinged on his own vocation, dredged up a dim memory. "He was... Champion of the Arena, yes?"

"Yes, for a _very _long time. One of the City Guards told me this Dunmer stabbed him right through the heart, and they buried him, and now he's turned up again. But then, he was half-vampire, so I suppose it's not so very surprising after all."

"Hm," Serano said, assimilating this. He had been to the Imperial City only once, and he had never been to the Arena. He had never seen the Grand Champion. "Whatever was that Orc's name, Sister? I can't seem to recall it."

"Oh, everyone called him the Gray Prince," Florien said. "Because of his being only half-Orc, you know, though he used to claim he was the son of a nobleman. His name was Agronak gro-Malog. That's who they're out after, anyway."

_Agronak, _Serano thought. His memory for certain kinds of details was very precise, and he did remember that the Argonian girl had called his rescuer by that name._ He was pale, for an Orc. And one doesn't see blue eyes so very often. I wonder if the Watch Captain knows Agronak can run by day. _

"Has he committed some crime?" Serano said.

"Tarsalus – that's the guard I talked to – said he's a traitor. Aiding and abetting a Dremora. And he attacked some Legionnaires, although apparently he didn't kill any of them. A Dremora and a half-vampire! I can't imagine why they don't tear each other to pieces, really. But one can't fathom how such people think, can one?"

"One can't," Serano said. "No." _And yet I doubt seriously whether either of them is in danger from the other. _He dredged up the three-day-old memory of a snatch of conversation:

The Orc, patiently exasperated, had said, _I'll try to explain what _friend _means later, all right?_

And the Dremora, though distortion made her voice hard to read, had answered almost in kind. _I know what it means._

"Altogether a very colorful story," Florien was saying. "Tsk, there's a hole in the knee of those trousers, Brother. Shall I sew it up for you later? I shan't be sleeping. I don't sleep very much."

"I can manage, thanks," Serano said mildly. "I had a run-in with some bandits. Fortunately, they found I had nothing worth taking."

"Ah, then you're very lucky they didn't kill you," Florien said. "I hear some of them are terrible men. Or whatever. One does see Argonian and Khajiit bandits, of course. Well, _I _don't, that is. I haven't been out of Bravil in a year."

"These were men," Serano said. "And... Yes. I was very fortunate. Mara does watch over her own."

"Praise be our Mother," Florien said promptly, and to Serano's surprise, without irony. "Can I help you light a candle for thanksgiving, Brother?"

"Now that, you most certainly may help me to do," Serano said. "Lead the way, Sister."

"Yes, indeed," Florien said, and turned and marched brightly away.

He hadn't given his word. But Serano considered he would remain silent, all the same. He was a mer who took his debts seriously, and Agronak gro-Malog had enough problems to worry about.

---

Very far from Bravil, one of those problems was making itself manifest.

The day was colder than the last two. Agronak had passed the night exactly as usual, but he woke to find himself firmly pressed between a seated Dremora and a curled-up and inert Argonian. It took a long time to get No Claws awake and moving, even after he'd started a fire. He'd thought she was doing all right, once she'd had some breakfast and they were on their way West again.

Then the temperature dropped even further, and freezing rain began to fall. Less than an hour afterward, Agronak was walking along beside the lead horse when No Claws fell out of her saddle. He was on the wrong side to catch her, but LoAmai moved surprisingly quickly.

"She is yours," LoAmai said. "You carry her."

The horse, bereft of instructions, slowed to a halt. It exhaled protestingly, shaking its head at the rain. Agronak walked around to where the Dremora stood and accepted the limp Argonian. He couldn't set her down; the ground was soaked and freezing. LoAmai watched, head on one side. Her hair was soaking wet, plastered down around her horns. Agronak was sure his own was in no better condition. Frigid raindrops pinged off the bald crown of his head.

"No Claws?" Agronak said. The Argonian's head moved against his tunic. His voice had probably vibrated right through her tympanum, loud as thunder.

"Sorry," she said weakly. "So cold..."

"If I could get on that horse, I could hold you up," Agronak said. "And you'd be warmer. But they won't let me ride them, even if I didn't just fall off."

"And I would certainly fall off, before you ask," LoAmai said.

"Barsabas," No Claws said.

"I don't see how that will help," Agronak said. "If you use up all your strength summoning him - "

"He can ride," No Claws said.

"Where does a zombie learn to ride?" Agronak said.

"He knew when I found him," No Claws said. She managed the full sentence, but it was obviously difficult. _I'm not as warm as a horse, _Agronak thought.

"If that's what you want," Agronak said.

---

No Claws heard his voice from inside a very small, very cold place. She hadn't yet fallen into the pit where Araloch had once thrown her, but she could feel the edge of it somewhere nearby. Sometimes she wondered if other Argonians, caught here in this frigid dark, heard the same voices she heard.

Take, for example, her sisters.

No Claws had not lied to Agronak about the number of her siblings. There ought to be no way she could know that, of course, given that she'd been left at the orphanage while still an infant, but she knew.

She did have five sisters. Three were still living, but one had died in the shell, and one had died of an influenza at barely two. And here, in the confines of her own torpid self, No Claws heard their voices. They weren't nearby at the moment, but she could hear them laughing and talking to each other somewhere in the middle distance. Aetherius has its share of dead children, but Smallest Eyes and the unnamed younger sister – Smallest Eyes called her Never Born – were not ready to move on. No Claws sometimes wondered if her parents ever saw them, playing about the house where they had lived, or if they were only in some other plane overlapping it.

There were other voices. Again, she had told Agronak the truth when she said she had chosen Barsabas because his family would not claim his body. But she'd found that out from Barsabas himself. It was here that she'd first heard the heavy tread of a fighting man, and the uncertain voice asking if anyone could hear him.

She still hovered on the cusp of the pit, but if she listened carefully, she could hear him pacing down below. He was always within call.

No Claws huddled more closely against Agronak's warm body, forcibly reminding herself of things external, and weakly raised one hand. She had no deficiency of mana _this _time, at least. Not after so many days without casting. The raindrops that struck her fingers stung with a painful chill.

_"Barsabas," _she said.

He moved before she had even finished speaking, curling the pit around him like a cloak as he shot forward between planes. No Claws latched onto that, dragging herself after him into the daylight. Yellow sparks fell around Barsabas as he materialized. No Claws opened her eyes in time to see – well, in time to see the leathery surface of Agronak's tunic. She turned her head and saw Barsabas standing there, swaying slightly as he watched the half-Orc with narrow eyes.

"Grnnngh?" he said.

"All right," she said, as soothingly as she could – it still seemed very dark. "'Just cold."

"Get on the horse," Agronak said. "I'll hand her up to you."

"No Claws?" Barsabas said, looking at the Argonian with cloudy eyes. He didn't seem to notice the rain.

"Do it," she said. Barsabas went immediately to the horse and mounted. The animal made no demur. A soldier's horse sometimes does have to carry things that smell like death or booze or both. The zombie sat unmoving in the saddle, frowning the way he always did when he was trying to remember something. A lock of lank black hair slid forward over his shoulder.

"Here," Agronak said. Barsabas locked one knee around the saddle horn, as naturally as a living man would do, and held out his arms. No Claws felt herself lifted as easily as if she were a feather, and then she was seized by cold hands and lifted up to sit sidesaddle. She slid a weak arm around the zombie's waist as he held her there carefully. He was cold, but he was already getting warmer from sitting on the horse. "Hold on, I'll get a couple of the blankets," Agronak said.

"No Claws?" Barsabas said again. She heard his voice beside her tympanum, but there was no inhalation before he spoke. He would always smell like liquor – she hadn't been able to get any better preservatives – but at least he was clean. The wounds of his death were sealed. She'd done the very best she could for him, and a clawless-born could be expected to do the best work of all when it came to raising the dead.

"It's all right," she said. Her voice was already a little stronger. A moment later Agronak came back with a blanket. He reached up to wrap it around her shoulders, but the horse shied. No Claws experienced a moment of tilting perspective. The dead man's arm tightened painfully around her shoulders, and then the horse stood still again.

"Sorry," Agronak said. "Coordinated for a zombie, isn't he?"

"Of course he is," No Claws said proudly. "He's _my _zombie."

"Yours," Barsabas echoed blankly. No Claws felt the stringy muscle stir as he reached out to take the blankets Agronak handed him. He held them for a moment, unsure what to do with them. No Claws reached up and fumbled them around her shoulders, trusting Barsabas to prevent her from falling off the horse. They were a little damp from the rain, but better than nothing.

"Good," she said. "Follow Agronak."

"Follow," Barsabas said. He wrapped one arm more firmly around No Claws and reached for the reins with the other.

"Right, then," Agronak said. "I guess we'll just keep on West. We're bound to run into shelter sooner or later. Seems like there's something every half-mile out here."

He set off at a fast walk. A dark fast-moving glimpse was all No Claws had of LoAmai, and then Barsabas urged the horse forward with his knees. No Claws rode on, safely encircled by the stiff arm of the only creature on earth with whom she felt safe, and wanted, and necessary.

_Yes, he's a dead Imperial. But he's _my _dead Imperial._


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

_Yep, the updates are coming slower lately. This is because I'm spending a lot of time on med school apps and getting an Oblivion mod finished. I don't know when things will speed up, but rest assured I'm not quitting this project until it's well and truly done. _

_Barsabas is another Biblical name, by the way. It means "son of rest." What can I say, I'm an American fundy with college degrees, and I like irony._

"I think they're liking me less all the time," Agronak said. He walked quickly beside LoAmai, trying not to look at the sky. The rain had stopped. The sun was visible through a gap in the clouds, and the brightness was painful.

"Who?" LoAmai said. She squinted, red eyes barely visible. Her thin hair was already dry. It blew in wisps around her face as a cold breeze sprang up.

"The horses," Agronak said. "They let me tie them to the travois before, and now I can hardly get near one without it trying to kick me." He glanced irritably at the nearest packhorse. It rolled a gimlet eye at him as if daring him to walk closer.

LoAmai twitched her lips in something that might be mistaken for a smile. "They possess senses you lack," she said.

"Meaning what?" said Agronak.

"You had only been dead twice the first time you saw them. How many times has it been now?"

Agronak shot her a disquieted look. "You mean I'm changing? I don't _feel _any different." For that matter, he had to take everyone's word for it that he was actually dead during those parts of the night that he couldn't remember.

LoAmai shrugged. "Perhaps they are simply more intelligent than they look. They seem to tolerate the dead mortal." The big black horse that currently carried Barsabas and No Claws walked placidly along through the tall grass, showing no inclination to bolt, shy, or otherwise indicate disapproval of the dead man on its back.

"He's human," Agronak said. "And they were owned by human Legionnaires. Maybe that's why."

"The question does not interest me," LoAmai said.

"Well, it interests _me. _I'm fairly sure even a full vampire can be killed by having his head stepped on by a horse, thank you very much."

"You insisted on bringing them."

"Someone has to carry the bottles and No Claws," Agronak said. "I seem to recall you declined that honor."

"You insisted on bringing those also."

"_One _of us has to plan ahead," Agronak said. "I don't think No Claws has gotten past which cast-on-touch fire spell she's going to use to incinerate me the first time I try to drink her blood."

The Argonian raised her head abruptly, startled. She still sat sidesaddle in front of the zombie, held there by one of his arms as he held the reins with the other. He didn't seem to be paying attention to the conversation. His eyes were blank and distant, though his grip was unwavering.

"How – how did you know that?" said No Claws.

"Oh, please," Agronak said. "You practically flinch every time I get near you, and your zombie would as soon kill me as look at me. He didn't evolve that attitude all by himself, because he can't, can he? He picked it up from you."

"He reacts to everyone that way," No Claws said.

"I restrain my shock with difficulty," Agronak said, rolling his eyes. "He does that because _you _react to everyone that way. Admit it."

"I have to," she said quietly. "I was born a No Claws."

"You don't have to be what you're born," Agronak said.

"Yes, I do," No Claws said. "Everyone does."

---

Meanwhile, some way Southeast, a party of grim men in chainmail rode out the gates of Bravil. They turned their horses and hounds due North, confident that they would quickly find what they sought.

They were, as it happens, completely wrong.

---

"I don't know if I want to go in there," Agronak said, staring up at the white bulk of the ruin. The main body was two long, perpendicular wings, but with the way the walls expanded on their way into the ground, he suspected it was bigger inside. The walls had once been white stone, but were now covered in moss and morning glories. In the shadow of the angled walls stood a statue of some long-forgotten Elf or deity, hands outstretched above a small pond. Vines hung from the statue's supplicating arms and trailed in the clear, shallow water. Ice had crusted in the shadowed edges of the stone-rimmed pool. A brief tour had found no other living things nearby, and no door but the great square of stone on one end.

"I think you have no choice," LoAmai said. "Provided you are serious in your intent to keep the Argonian alive. It will rain again soon, and you do not know how long the dead man will last."

"All day," No Claws said. "But she's right. I can't bear the cold for a full day's travel, especially not in the rain." She sounded faintly defensive, as if she half-expected he would leave her behind.

"No windows, and one door," Agronak said. "At least it looks more defensible than a cave."

No Claws snorted. "This is an _Ayleid _ruin, Agronak. The Ayleids don't rest quietly, and they liked traps."

"You think those will still work? This place looks really old," Agronak said.

"Probably hundreds of years," No Claws said. "I've read that Ayleid engineering can last for a thousand or more."

"Wonderful," Agronak said. He drew his sword. The silver pommel was a cold and reassuring weight in his hand. "In that case, I'll go first."

"Idiot Orc," LoAmai said. "Let the dead man go. He cannot be killed."

"How does that sit with you, No Claws?" Agronak said. He watched the Argonian sit silently on the horse, her face hidden by her hood. _I really am curious. Will she let me risk my life, or will she risk her only protection against LoAmai and me? If he gets unsummoned in there, she can't get him back for at least a day. I think she believes I won't let the demon kill her – could I stop LoAmai, really? I wonder - but she doesn't trust me, either. Quite a dilemma._

"All right," No Claws said finally. "Get down, Barsabas."

The zombie dismounted easily from the horse. No Claws stayed upright until he could lift her down, but it looked like it cost her. She stood and clung to the stirrup with one hand, fighting for balance. Barsabas watched her, frowning.

"I'll make a fire while we wait," Agronak said. LoAmai made a derisive noise. He ignored it. "Shall I give him my sword?"

"No," Barsabas said, before No Claws could answer. The confusion cleared from his face as if by magic, leaving behind a startling lucidity. Agronak felt an uncomfortable sensation of deja vu. He'd seen that expression of calculation once before. _In the Arena. While he was doing his best to beat my face in. _"I can't use one," the dead man said.

"I don't know if you can use bare fists on a ghost," Agronak said.

"Barsabas can," No Claws said. "The dead can always fight the dead. Barsabas?" she said.

"Yes, No Claws," said Barsabas.

"Go inside and see what's there. If anything bothers you, kill it."

The look of frightening clarity did not leave the dead man's face, but the sound he made was purely animal. "Hrrnnngh?"

"That's right," No Claws said softly. "Kill."

Barsabas turned and ran toward the ruin's entrance, a square stone door on one end of the nearest wing. It slid back as he approached. In an instant the blackness of his clothes merged with the blackness of the doorway, and he was gone. The door closed itself behind him.

"Do Ayleid doors always do that?" Agronak said.

"I never saw one before," No Claws said. "But magicka reeks from this place. It's rising off the stone like smoke. Anyone with an iota of Alteration skill could build a self-opening door here."

"She is right," LoAmai said. "I sense it as well." The Dremora held out one hand toward a damp cluster of grass near the entrance. A whorl of red light blossomed from the palm of her hand. The plant burst into flames. The nearest horse stamped and blew, but did not run away.

"I didn't know you could do that," Agronak said. He sheathed his sword and looked around for anything else that might burn, lest the pitiful flame go out. He felt chilled to the bone himself, and he had no idea what it must be like for a Dremora or an Argonian.

"Only in a place like this," LoAmai said. "In the citadel there were fountains of mana. I have seen no such thing in this plane."

"You haven't seen a city yet," Agronak said. "But I don't think even the Arcane University has anything like that." He stuck a couple of twigs into the burning grass and looked around for more. LoAmai squatted next to the growing flame and added another handful of wet grass. It sent up a stream of black smoke. The plant she had set on fire had been growing out of a small patch of dirt, a place where the flagstones that surrounded the ruin had buckled and given way.

"Not that I've ever seen," the Argonian said. She stood staring at the entrance to the ruin, still leaning against the horse's warm side.

"Don't worry," Agronak said. He seized hold of a fallen log that was half-buried in dirt and dragged it loose with a jerk. "He'll be back. And if worse come to worst, you can always summon him again tomorrow. I'll be dead all night. It's not as if _I'm _going to hurt you, and I have LoAmai's word that she won't either."

"The word of a Dremora," No Claws said.

LoAmai looked up from her place by the small fire. "You have told lies. I have not."

"Not that anyone could prove," No Claws said.

"Let's not get our robes into a wad, hm?" Agronak said. He hauled the log over to the tiny fire, examined it briefly, and then stamped down hard on a point a couple of feet behind the end. Wood splintered. Agronak extracted his foot and brushed splinters off his leather trouser leg. Then he gathered up pieces of the log and carefully added them to the fire. "Let's concentrate on staying alive. We still don't know if the Legion can find us or not."

"If they don't, the Guild will," No Claws said. "They'll want to know about an unsummoned Dremora. And they have ways of finding out." She raised a hand slowly to the horse's bridle and tugged it toward the fire. All three of the horses edged nearer to the warmth as No Claws knelt awkwardly on the damp stone. One lipped a nearby stalk of viper's bugloss, tearing off the shriveled pink and blue flowers.

"Divination, you mean? I thought only necromancers did that," Agronak said.

No Claws held out her hands toward the fire. "Don't be ridiculous. The Legionnaires will tell people. And people will talk. And the Guild mages will listen, and they'll tell that awful old man Traven. Simple."

"Was the Archmage the one who threatened to kill you?" Agronak said.

"Of course," No Claws said. "Not in so many words, but he made it clear. He hates necromancers."

"He's not exactly the only one," Agronak said.

"Thank you for reminding me," No Claws muttered. "Brh. I hate the cold."

"Me, too," Agronak said. "I'll find more wood."

---

Barsabas paused deep in the blue dim of the ruin. He stood half-crouched in the shadow of a doorway, listening. His black hair trailed forward over his shoulders as he craned his neck. No steam rose from his lips, though it was almost as cold inside as outside. Dragging footsteps were just barely audible from beyond the arch of white stone. Occasionally, something moaned. Merely listening could not tell him if there was more than one. The echoes off the stone tended to distort the sound, and besides, his hearing wasn't quite as good as an ordinary human's. That was all right. He had one or two other senses he hadn't had when he was alive, and they were telling him there was something up ahead that was animate, but not living.

It wasn't a summoned creature, because he could recognize that, too. A summoned thing would be dependent on someone else's mana, the way Barsabas was dependent on No Claws, and that left its own odd little magicka signature. Not that Barsabas had thought through this reasoning; even with the amount of magicka No Claws had spent on him, his thought process was more akin to _tastes different inside my head. _

Barsabas shifted carefully from foot to foot. He didn't know how big the other thing was. Other things, actually. If he tried he could sense another mana signature, an undead creature with a strong aura of magicka. _Ghost, _he thought. It didn't really matter. Whatever they were, they didn't taste friendly. And No Claws had told him to kill anything that wasn't friendly. That was just fine with Barsabas.

He remembered being alive, sometimes. Here in this plane magicka buzzed through his head like a drug, clouding things up. Mostly he remembered it when he was back in the pit, waiting to hear a summoning voice. He remembered the feeling of his heart beating and the sensation of blood moving in his veins. Sometimes he missed it. Most of the time he didn't. Being alive had involved a lot of discomfort, not all of it physical. There had been reasons why Barsabas, a man educated in horsemanship and many other things, had taken to the Arena.

The reasons had quickly stopped mattering when he'd discovered how much he loved hand-to-hand. Everyone he'd ever been angry at was right in front of him, armed and ready, and not only was it all right to hit them, it was _required. _And he was _good _at it. Once upon a time he might have had a more complex way of looking at this, of course. Now all he knew was that the world was clearest and brightest at exactly two times: When No Claws was happy with him, and when he was hitting things.

If he was lucky, on a day like today, he might achieve both. Barsabas smiled, swaying slightly back and forth. The undead that walked and moaned was close to him now, so that he could hear the rasp of dead bare feet on the stone floor. This zombie didn't have a No Claws to take care of it. It would come apart much more easily than would Barsabas.

Of course, _that _was true of lots of things.

Barsabas grinned, showing his yellow teeth, and threw himself around the corner and into the fray.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

"I think I see a flaw in our reasoning," Agronak said.

"_Our_ reasoning," LoAmai said. She was standing a little back from the fire, staring off into the dark. It had been a long day, and it was getting colder by the minute. No Claws sat hunched miserably, as close to the fire as she could get and not actually be set alight.

"How would we know if he gets unsummoned in there?" Agronak said.

"I would know," No Claws said. "I always know."

"So you're sure he's still al – still walking around."

"Yes," No Claws said firmly.

"Is it possible he could be trapped somehow?" Agronak said. "Down a pit or pinned under something?"

"It's not likely," No Claws said. She enunciated carefully, obviously trying to keep her sharp teeth from chattering. "He can climb better than almost anything. And I told him to see what was there. He won't stop until he's seen everything. If he were pinned, he'd tear himself in half to get free."

"Can he do such a thing?" LoAmai said.

"He's a zombie," No Claws said. "He doesn't feel pain. He doesn't feel fear. And when I give him an order, he won't stop until it's carried out. It's what he is." She exhaled softly, not quite a laugh. "And he's smart enough to know anything he loses will be back the next time I summon him."

"Nearly a perfect soldier," LoAmai said.

"Not something I'd expect to hear from someone who's _been _a soldier," Agronak said.

"I have often wished I did not feel pain, Agronak gro-Malog."

"And I've often wished you couldn't talk," Agronak said. "Perfect soldiers, indeed. Clearly it's only a matter of time before No Claws raises a zombie horde to terrorize all Tamriel."

"Ha," No Claws said. "Do you know how long it took to raise just Barsabas to where I could summon him consistently? Almost a year. If I had a thousand years I _might _come up with a very _small _army. I could raise any number of much lesser zombies, of course, but they wouldn't last as long and they probably wouldn't understand orders. I'd be torn to shreds by my own creatures."

The other two stared at her.

"Been giving that some thought, have you?" Agronak said.

No Claws snorted. "I've been giving some thought to living to be old, Agronak."

"It's probably overrated," Agronak said.

"I disagree," LoAmai said.

"You would - " Agronak started to say, then broke off as he realized the door to the Ayleid ruin was swinging open. He faded back and to one side, drawing his sword. LoAmai was already on her knees next to the corner of the wall, arrow nocked to her bow.

_That had better be him, _Agronak thought. _Otherwise some vengeful spirit is in for a _very_ unpleasant surprise._

No Claws stood up slowly. She didn't try to find cover. She knew who was coming. Barsabas stalked out of the doorway as she watched. There was a ragged tear down one of his cheeks, exposing his jaw and teeth, but it had frozen before it bled very much. A thick black streak ran down that side of his neck.

"You _did _find something," she said. She moved around the fire, careful to stay in reach of the heat, as he came quickly toward them. He was limping slightly, possibly because there was a bone sticking out of his right calf. The other shinbone in that leg – _the radius, _thought No Claws - was taking the weight, assisted by the fact that his flesh was near-frozen (probably from spell fallout), but it would have been agonizing to a living man.

"Does that hurt?" Agronak said. He didn't sheathe his sword until the door to the ruin had swung shut again.

"No," Barsabas said. The damage to his jaw made his speech a little slurred. He edged closer to No Claws, looking at the fire nervously. He'd never caught fire that No Claws had seen. _I wonder if he somehow remembers the cremation of his body_. "I have to go soon," Barsabas said sadly.

"I'll get you back as soon as I can," No Claws promised, reaching out to squeeze his arm reassuringly. She didn't touch his hands, because the knuckles were practically in shreds, white skin and black blood frozen to a stiff mess. "You ran into something using cold magic, I see. What did you find?"

"Fifteen zombies," he said. He smiled horribly, cracking the wound in his cheek. "They were slow."

"Of course they were," No Claws said, smiling back. "They weren't like you. But zombies don't use magic. Were there ghosts?"

"Only two." Barsabas frowned slightly. "There's a lich."

"Wonderful," Agronak muttered. No Claws ignored him.

"Did you kill it?" she said.

"No," Barsabas said. The frown deepened. "It didn't attack."

"There was a lich, and it _didn't _attack you?" No Claws said.

"It followed me," he said. "And it talked. I didn't understand."

Behind him, Agronak drew his sword again. Barsabas edged sideways so he could keep an eye on the Orc.

"It doesn't seem to have followed him out," Agronak said. He didn't notice Barsabas' reaction, because he was staring intently at the door to the ruin. It was still closed. The Dremora had not yet moved from her original position.

"Maybe it's not hostile," No Claws said, without much hope. LoAmai snorted. Agronak's back was to them, but No Claws suspected he rolled his eyes.

"And maybe it just didn't attack him because he's another Undead," Agronak said. "I don't like this."

"What are we going to do, then?" No Claws demanded. "We have to get inside soon. And Barsabas killed everything else. Didn't you, Barsabas? _That's _right. Good work. Did you run into any traps?"

"Maces on the ceiling," he said, without looking away from Agronak.

"Is that what happened to your face?"

He nodded. "There was a pit, too. The floor drops. You can see it by the bones." Barsabas sighed, a conspicuous movement for someone who normally did not breathe. He turned to look down at No Claws. "Out of time. You be careful." No Claws slid an arm around his waist and squeezed. Barsabas returned the pressure around her shoulders, carefully, since his grip could easily break her bones.

"You'll be back," No Claws said. "You're mine. I won't let you go."

"Yours," Barsabas said, and dissolved into gold sparks again. No Claws let her arm drop to her side. _Some day I'll figure out how to summon him permanently._

"How long _will _it be until you can get him back?" Agronak said. No Claws received the impression he was refraining from comment on the exchange he'd just seen. _Let him think what he likes. At least I'm responsible for what I summon. How many necromancers would bother? How many would care?_

"Too long," she said. "Even here."

"He seemed a little... Brighter... Than last time," Agronak said.

"Yes," No Claws said. "There's more magicka for him to live on here, but he has to funnel it through me to keep going. When the first expenditure runs out, so does he."

"Then I suppose there's nothing for it," Agronak said, and slid up to the Ayleid door. It opened soundlessly, and the Orc disappeared inside. The Dremora followed him, and No Claws, unwilling to be left outside with the horses, perforce followed as well.

The door closed behind her, leaving them in the dark.

"Careful," Agronak's voice said from up ahead. "There's a steep stairway here, and..."

"And what?" No Claws said into an ominous silence.

"We've found the lich," Agronak said. No Claws edged to one side to peer around his body. A faint blue light rose up from below. Something hung silhouetted against the glow, a shape like a man with a staff in his hand. The dangling feet did not touch the floor. The thing was bobbing slightly up and down, and red points of light glowed from a face that was still in shadow. As she watched, the face tilted up toward them.

"Oh, _Arkay,_" No Claws said, very quietly. The sound of a bowstring drawing taut was LoAmai's only comment.

And then the lich spoke, in a voice like the wind blowing over a grave.

"Grig babbit nar," he said.

No Claws blinked rapidly. A moment later, Agronak said, "_What _did he just say?"

"I don't know," No Claws said.

"Baratu nigliti forven dobrou," the lich said sternly. "Whogham." It did not come closer, but it did not seem inclined to retreat, either.

"It is gibberish," LoAmai said.

"I thought Barsabas didn't understand because he was speaking an Ayleid language," No Claws said. "Can it really be...?"

"Sorry," Agronak said loudly, his voice booming down the enclosed stairwell. "I didn't quite catch that. Do you speak Imperial?"  
"Warg nahoo," the lich said, its tone conveying something very like disgust, and it turned its back and floated away.

"Should we follow him?" No Claws said.

"I'll wager he knows how to avoid the traps," Agronak said.

"Or how to walk us into them," LoAmai said. "A creature whose feet do not touch the ground has nothing to fear from pits."

"Good point. So we'll watch for bones, like Barsabas said."

"I can't see very much in here," No Claws said.

"I can," said Agronak gro-Malog.

---

A long and very cold walk took them down the stairs, across a long passage, and through a great empty hall with a few pillars and nothing else. There were scattered bones in one quadrant of the floor. Four bodies lay scattered about the room, giving forth a stench of decay. The lich glided straight over the bones, then turned to watch the others as they went around. He made some comment at this point which sounded vaguely like "Bibra naszich."

"Nice try," Agronak said. The lich muttered something else and glided on. Agronak glanced behind him, where No Claws was shuffling along blindly. LoAmai ranged to one side, looking around narrowly. She seemed more comfortable in the dim light than No Claws. "I think that establishes he's not exactly friendly," Agronak said.

"I don't think there _are _friendly liches," No Claws said. "I don't understand why he hasn't attacked us."

"And you're the necromancer. Wonderful. Are you _sure _Barsabas found every trap in here?"

"Yes," No Claws said firmly. "He's absolutely reliable."

"I don't question whether he's reliable," Agronak said patiently. "My question is whether he's absolutely _perceptive."_

"Oh," No Claws said. Agronak was not reassured by the nervous silence that followed this. "I don't really understand how he _does _perceive. Most summoned zombies can't talk and I never thought to ask him."

"Could he even explain that?" Agronak edged forward toward the doorway through which the lich had just disappeared. A narrow corridor lay beyond, lit by pale blue crystals stuck to the walls. It curved around out of sight. _I hate this place already. _He sighed and edged forward, sword at the ready. Nothing happened. He edged further. Nothing happened. Another few seconds' edging brought him to another doorway, opening into a large room that was still smaller than the one he had come from.

"On a good day," No Claws said, a little breathlessly. "If I had two weeks to build up the mana it would take to summon him at that level."

"Hm." Agronak felt rather than heard LoAmai come up behind his shoulder as he surveyed the new room. The lich hovered over in one corner, beside a ragged pallet that lay on the stone floor. A few crates were scattered around as well, and a rough table. "_That _doesn't look like it belongs here."

"Giba vid skibbich," the lich informed him.

"Whatever you say," Agronak said.

"Those are welkynd stones," No Claws said from behind him. Agronak risked a glance around. The room was lit by crystals in sconces, set in recesses up on the walls. Unlike the ones in the hallway, these seemed to have been cut into symmetric shapes, set decoratively in worked metal.

"So?" Agronak said.

"You can use them to recharge your magicka," No Claws said, with an exaggerated patience that reminded him again of her age. "And they won't hurt, like some potions do."

"I suspect he might object to that," Agronak said. The lich was hovering next to the table, watching them. As Agronak came cautiously forward he saw a couple of glowing greenish things on the floor. They were shaped like puddles, but they had an odd solidity to them, each one peaking in the middle. An Orc of broader experience might have said they looked like meringues. Agronak had never seen a meringue. His mental comparison was more akin to _High Elf hair gone seriously wrong. _"Any idea what those are?"

"This is where Barsabas ran into the ghosts," No Claws said. In the absence of an immediate threat, she seemed to be a little less nervous. "What, you've never seen ectoplasm?"

"Summoned ghosts don't leave any," Agronak said. "And that's the only kind I've seen." He looked back at the lich. "Does he look like he's waiting for something?"

"There is a book on the table," LoAmai said. Then she put up her bow and calmly walked straight past him. Agronak inhaled sharply, but the lich simply watched her pick up the volume and open it. The Dremora flipped through a few pages.

"Can you read that?" Agronak said.

"Of course," LoAmai said. "Even an idiot could learn a simple Mortal tongue like Imperial in three thousand souls."

"Vack narjy?" the lich said in an outraged tone.

"You know, I think he can understand what you're saying," Agronak said.

"He can," LoAmai said. She flipped another page. "He is unable to communicate, not to comprehend. This is a journal."

"_His _journal?" Agronak said.

"No."

Agronak edged forward and peered around her shoulder, trying to keep an eye on the Undead at the same time. He stepped back after a moment's scrutiny. The language might be Imperial, but the handwriting was atrocious. He waited as the Dremora read quickly. No Claws became impatient before he did.

"Well?" she said.

"The writer calls him Whogham the Incomprehensible,"LoAmai said. "It is not his name, but he apparently uses the word often."

"Whogham," the lich said promptly.

"The writer was a necromancer of some skill. He believes this lich to be under a curse."

"All liches are cursed," No Claws said. "One way or another." The Undead beside them nodded silently.

"He lacks the power to do harm," LoAmai said. "So long as he is not understood. The writer suspected that if he ever began to comprehend what was being said, Whogham would kill him."

"He must have been right," Agronak said. "Barsabas didn't find any living people in here."

LoAmai snorted. "I doubt it. This journal is old for a thing made by mortal hands." She flipped to the last page. "And he never says he began to understand."

"Vacjit narabat," the lich said. "Bardit wogham."

"I wonder _why _he says that word so often?" No Claws said.

"It probably means _fool," _LoAmai said.

The lich began to laugh. It was a dry and awful sound, echoing off the stone walls as from the bottom of a well. He raised his hand, and a blast of lightning threw the Dremora back across the room.

"_Now _you've done it," Agronak said, and cut the lich in half.


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

The laughter went on. Agronak didn't pause to consider it. He went on slashing at the hovering Undead, and the silver cut through the mummified body as if it were paper. Yet the lich did not fall to pieces. After a few seconds of this Agronak realized his sword seemed to be getting heavier. Then he glanced down and saw the ribbon of red light that connected him with the lich, chest to chest.

_He's draining my life, _Agronak realized grimly. A blast of green magicka hit the Undead square in the shoulders and head, but he shrugged it off. A negligent gesture sent another bolt of lightning at the source. Agronak heard No Claws shriek, the _thud _of her body striking the stone floor.

_Oblivion, _thought Agronak._ That's both of them. I could break his connection if I ran away fast enough, but then he'd kill the others - if he hasn't already._

Agronak fought faster, dodging sideways to avoid a sudden swipe of a clawlike hand. He tried hacking through the lich's neck, but the dead flesh annealed as fast as he could cut through it. His arm was getting weaker all the time. The silver sword felt as if it were made of lead.

The lich swiped at him again. He dodged it, but barely. _I'm going to die, _Agronak recognized silently. But there was nothing for it but to fight on. The creature's laughter rang in his ears.

---

The last kynval pushed herself up from the floor, shaking her head. Many lifetimes' earned resistance to magicka had protected her once again, but there was still a faint buzzing in her ears. She had hit the floor on her left side, and she could tell she was badly bruised, but this was not the first time. She shrugged it off as she unslung her bow.

She was just in time to see No Claws' attack fail. The Argonian struck the floor with an _oof _and made no move to get up again. Agronak gro-Malog was a wild, futile blur, circling the lich almost too fast for eyes to follow, but LoAmai could see the ribbon of magicka that bound them together. She understood instantly. LoAmai bared her teeth in an expression that did not even slightly resemble a smile.

_He will not be fast enough, because speed does not matter. The harder he fights, the faster his life will bleed away. _There were _krynvelhat_ in the Citadel who could do likewise, and one who managed to take a life that way would be nearly unstoppable for minutes afterwards. _I do not wish to face a lich with the life of a half-immortal in him. And I am yet debtsworn._

Agronak was slowing down, audibly panting. There was only one possible course. LoAmai nocked the battered steel arrow to her bow, the one that was stilled stained with her blood, and the blood of a lion, and the blood of an Elf. She was not particularly religious for a Dremora, but she sent a silent prayer in Dagon's direction anyway.

Then she shot Agronak through the heart.

---

Agronak felt the impact, but not the pain. He stared down at the end of the arrowhead protruding from his tunic. His mind was completely clear as the red ribbon snapped, even as the sword fell from his nerveless fingers.

_Good shot, _was the only thought he had time for before the dark took him.

---

"Hrrrrngghhh?" the lich said. His sockets glowed red as he looked up from Agronak's body, grimacing in frustrated rage. His spell had already dissipated. The last kynval snarled deep in her chest, dropped her bow, and drew her dagger. She was quick, but so was the old Undead. He cast another spell at her as she leaped forward, another lifeline of glowing crimson. It struck at the top of her sternum and slid aside. The light stuttered and faded, and then LoAmai's feet hit the stone floor in front of the Undead.

Daedric steel is the sharpest in two planes. The kynval's dagger severed his neck instantly, cutting off his scream of rage. The lich's body fell one way and its head the other. LoAmai stepped over Agronak's body and stamped on the head until it was dust, then turned and cast her pittance of magicka at the lich's body. It caught fire at once, and was ashes in seconds. The fire burnt itself out on the stone floor a moment after. A faint pall of reeking smoke was all that remained.

"You _killed _him," said No Claws' voice. LoAmai looked up and saw the skinny creature getting painfully to her feet. She had not taken the impact as well as the kynval had.

"Yet you live," LoAmai said. "Can you run?"

"What kind of ques - "

"I will not repeat it,"LoAmai growled. "Go and get the bottles of blood, as many as you can carry. Go nowor I _will _kill you."

The Argonian opened her mouth. She looked at Agronak's body, and closed it. Then she turned and ran, staggering a little on the hem of her robe. LoAmai knelt beside the dead Orc and looked at him critically. He had fallen onto his right side. Her arrow had only just exited between his ribs on the left. She took hold of the wooden shaft where it protruded and shoved, careful not to break it. The arrowhead tore loose and shot forward, bringing with it a spattering of dark blood. LoAmai cut off the fletching with her dagger and pulled out the two pieces of the arrow.

She was not certain the Argonian would return at all. Even Agronak, who was foolishly trusting, had been occasionally suspicious of her. In any case, there was no time to waste. LoAmai rolled Agronak onto his back as she sat on the stone floor, her greaves scraping against the stone. His head flopped sideways, pale eyes staring without seeing. His skin, cold already by the kynval's standards, was growing even colder.

LoAmai laid the side of her left wrist against the hole in his chest and took the dagger in her right hand. Then she cut a neat line straight up her wrist, halfway to the elbow. She was careful not to cut too deeply and sever any tendons. If she survived, she might need them later. Dark blood flowed down her arm and into Agronak's wound. She had observed that Kyn bled faster than the Welkyn, though she had never known why. Perhaps it was because mortals were so cold.

Nothing happened for a while. Blood began to edge out from under Agronak's left shoulder, and not all of it was his. LoAmai wiped her dagger on Agronak's shirt, which was already ruined anyway, and sheathed it.

She was starting to feel lightheaded when she heard distant footsteps. They were erratic, but the Argonian's light tread was unmistakable. Other footsteps followed, quieter and more regular. LoAmai looked up as No Claws stumbled through the doorway with two bottles in one hand and a welkynd stone in the other. It was dark, its charge exhausted. No Claws let go of it as LoAmai watched. It hit the floor with a solid _clink. _A dark shape loomed up behind her, the dead Human in his black clothes.

"What are you doing?" No Claws said.

"What does it look like? Bring them here."

No Claws limped forward, favoring her right leg. She was breathing oddly, and the kynval's long experience told her the girl probably had one or two broken ribs. She removed the cork from a bottle before she handed it to LoAmai, saving her the trouble of trying to do it one-handed. The dead man seemed to be carrying several more.

"Put them on the table, Barsabas," No Claws said. Her pained and breathless voice confirmed LoAmai's guess. Barsabas went silently to obey. LoAmai raised the bottle to her lips. It was slightly warm, probably the right temperature for a living creature of Nirn. She drank as fast as she could swallow, tossed the bottle aside, and held out her hand for the other one.

"Why don't you use it for him?" No Claws said as she worked the wire around the stopper.

"It is not Kyn," LoAmai said. "Mine is."

"And Dremora blood is better, is it?" No Claws said. She handed over the other bottle. "Why did you shoot him?"

"Shut up," LoAmai snarled, and drank. She would not permit her hands to shake the way the Argonian's were doing, and that distracted her from the minor discomfort of the cut in her arm. Blood still ran freely, but Agronak had not moved.

And yet, the wound seemed a little smaller than before... LoAmai hefted the bottle consideringly, then handed it back to No Claws.

"Don't you need it?" No Claws said.

"Too much at once and I will heal," LoAmai said. "Close it, and stop asking idiot questions."

The pool of blood had stopped spreading from under Agronak's shoulder. It almost seemed to be creeping backwards, but that could be the effect of the dim light. LoAmai's vision was a little spotty around the edges, the effect of blood loss. No Claws, now sitting in a heap on the floor, seemed in little better case. The zombie made an anxious noise from somewhere behind LoAmai.

"Get the saddlebags," No Claws said. Barsabas ran back out the way they had come in. The kynval sat with her hand pressed firmly to Agronak's chest. Blood went on running down her arm and into the shrinking hole. It was about the size of a fingernail when she felt the first throb under her hand.

"Bottle," she said, and held out her other hand. No Claws gave it to her. LoAmai shoved the end in between Agronak's lips and tilted it, sending a thin trickle down his throat. A second later, she saw him swallow. A second after that, he blinked. A scarred hand reached up and took the bottle from LoAmai. He put down the entire thing in four gulps. He was trying to sit up, too, but LoAmai shoved him firmly back down.

"Stay," she said. "It is not healed."

Agronak set the bottle aside, and then he caught sight of the Argonian.

"No Claws?" he said. "Are you all right?"

The Argonian made a derisive noise, then winced. "No," she said. "But I'm better off than you. Your pet demon shot you through the heart."

"She's not a pet," Agronak said. He raised his head to look at the hole in his tunic and the place where there had lately been a hole in his chest. Then his eyes focused on LoAmai's bleeding arm. He swore, and this time he did sit up. "We'd better get that closed up."

"Barsabas is bringing the saddlebags," No Claws said. "There was some lavender."

"What were you thinking?" Agronak said, turning back to the kynval. LoAmai didn't bother holding her hand over the cut in her arm. It was too long for that to be effective. She laid her hand on the floor and ignored the widening pool under it with fine disdain.

"I could not let the lich kill you,"she said. "And while he was connected to you, I could not destroy _him._"

"So you killed Agronak instead," No Claws said slowly. "But you couldn't have known you could bring him back."

"He dies every night," LoAmai said, without taking her eyes from the half-Orc. "It was reasonable."

"Cold," Agronak said. He smiled wryly. "But reasonable. That's more or less you in a nutshell, isn't it?"

"In a what?" said LoAmai.

Then the effect of continuing blood loss caught up with her, and everything faded away.


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

So it was that Agronak gro-Malog, once the Champion of the Arena, found himself in an Ayleid ruin with two holes in his tunic and an unconscious Dremora in his lap. He swore bitterly, but he was careful as he adjusted her position so he could reach her left arm. It was still bleeding freely.

"Where's the lavender?" he said.

"Here," No Claws said. Barsabas came through the door with the saddlebags in his hands. He ran to set them beside the Argonian at her impatient gesture. She dug through them rapidly until she found a pink glass bottle. She tossed it to Agronak. He caught it, pulled the cork, and poured it over LoAmai's arm. From the corner of his eye, Agronak saw the zombie crouch down beside No Claws, holding a position that would be very uncomfortable for a living man.

"Are you sure you want to do that?" No Claws said. "She killed you."

"No Claws, I know you're in pain right now," Agronak said, without taking his eyes from the slackening blood flow from LoAmai's forearm. "And that makes it hard to think. I know. I've been there pretty often. But try and think it through, will you? You're smart. What would've happened if LoAmai hadn't shot me?"

No Claws opened her mouth angrily, inhaled, then stopped. Her tail lashed on the stone floor. She closed her mouth. Then she muttered something.

"What was that?" Agronak said. LoAmai's arm had stopped bleeding. He wiped away the dark blood – almost hot enough to burn his fingers – and looked at the new scar underneath.

"The lich would have killed you," No Claws said in a very small voice.

"Un huh. And then?"

"And then probably the Dremora, because he would have taken your life and he'd be a lot stronger."

"And then?" Agronak wiped his hands on his ruined shirt as he looked at the Argonian. She wrapped her arms around herself with a small sigh, then winced at the pain this caused.

"And then me," she wheezed.

"Exactly." Agronak picked up the bottle and reached out to put it back in the saddlebag. Barsabas made a sound somewhere between a moan and a growl. Agronak stopped, startled.

"Barsabas," No Claws said. The zombie subsided, but he watched Agronak very closely as he put the bottle away. "He probably doesn't understand," she said apologetically. "I didn't have mana enough to su - "

She stopped.

"What?" Agronak said. He went to pick LoAmai up and carry her over to the dusty pallet next to the table. He moved slowly, because Barsabas was watching him with a cold and milky stare.

"I didn't summon him," No Claws said.

Agronak set the Dremora down carefully. She was still breathing, but shallowly and fast.

"What do you mean, you didn't summon him? I thought you'd used one of those welkynd stone things."

"I didn't summon him," No Claws repeated faintly. "The welkynd stone recharged my mana. But I..." She paused to breathe painfully. "I had to use some of it to see my way through here. I never did the spell at all." She turned to look disbelievingly at the zombie, who was watching Agronak with something that looked very much like anger. It wasn't quite the same expression of savagery Agronak had seen on him before, he realized now.

"You wanted me," Barsabas said. "And you're hurt. I could feel it."

"But there was no way you could have come," No Claws said. "The magicka wasn't there."

"I don't need it any more," Barsabas said.

"I think he summoned himself," Agronak said. His sword lay on the ground nearby. He reached for it, very slowly. The zombie's dead eyes followed him.

"But that's impossible," No Claws said, staring at Barsabas. He shrugged.

"I did it," he said.

Agronak sheathed the sword and stood up carefully. "You look cold. I'll go get some wood and see if we can do anything with that brazier."

"Don't have to," No Claws said. "Help me up, Barsabas?" The zombie lifted her gently onto her feet. "Start a fire with magicka in a place like this... " She held out a hand toward the brazier. It burst alight with a blue flame. Agronak felt the searing heat from where he stood before it died down to a foot high or so.

"It'll keep on almost forever," No Claws said. She went slowly to kneel in front of the brazier. Barsabas went with her, step by step. He no longer seemed nervous to be near the open flame.

"We'd better have a look at you," Agronak said. "I think you might have some broken ribs."

"You touch her and I'll kill you," Barsabas said very clearly. His tone was matter-of-fact.

"Barsabas," No Claws said. "If you really summoned yourself..."

"I did," he said.

"You're not my creature. Not any more."

Agronak watched an expression of sheer, desperate panic cross the zombie's face. It was probably the closest to a human expression Agronak had ever seen him show.

"You mean you don't want me here any more?" he said.

"Wh - ? No!" No Claws turned a little too sharply and almost fell over. Barsabas caught her elbows, holding her up. She looked up at him. "Of course I do." She breathed again. "But you don't have to obey."

Barsabas shook his head as he looked down at her. He smiled sadly. "I may not always think as clearly as I do right now," he said. "But that hasn't changed. I'm still yours. I always will be."

"Then what's your problem with me?" Agronak said. "Is it because I killed you?"

"No," Barsabas said. He let go of No Claws, but kept a supporting hand near one of her elbows. She leaned gratefully. The zombie turned to look at Agronak with the same cold stare. "It's because all of this is your fault. If you'd let the legionnaires take the demon when they wanted her, No Claws would be safe."

"Not true," No Claws said.

"Yes, it is," Barsabas said, the only time Agronak had ever seen him disagree with her.

"No, it's not," No Claws said sharply. "I'll never _be _safe. I'm a No Claws. Trouble follows us."

"Trouble follows _him,_" Barsabas said.

"Can't say I'd disagree with you there," Agronak said.

"Then we are a curse on him," No Claws said. "Not the other way around."

"None of this is doing anything for your broken bones," Agronak pointed out.

No Claws muttered something. This time she almost sounded embarrassed.

"I didn't quite catch that," Agronak said.

She muttered again, a little louder. Argonians cannot visibly blush, but Agronak received the impression that she would have. This time he made out the words _man _and _shirt. _

"What about - ?"

Then he made the connection. It hadn't occurred to him, because down under the Arena there were no individual changing rooms. Everybody saw everybody naked sooner or later. You got used to it, or you had to patch yourself up after one of the less forgiving female fighters made mincemeat out of you. But to an insecure teenage girl who'd grown up to be a mage, where things like personal modesty had real meaning...

"Oh," he said. "If it's any comfort, I've seen quite a few naked Argonians in the Bloodworks. It wouldn't mean anything."

"Thank you, that is no comfort whatsoever," No Claws snapped.

"I'll do it," Barsabas said.

The other two looked at him.

"Do you even know how?" Agronak said.

"I fought hand to hand," Barsabas said. "_Only_ hand to hand. Would I have lasted long enough to challenge you if I couldn't tape broken ribs?"

"No," Agronak said.

"Then get out of here," Barsabas said.

"I'm not particularly inclined to leave you alone with LoAmai," Agronak said. "Not after what you just said."

"Then turn your back," No Claws said quickly, before Barsabas could respond.

"Fair enough. Let me get a couple of things for her." Agronak was less than thrilled with the prospect of having his back to Barsabas in the zombie's current incarnation, but the dead man's expression made it clear this was all the concession he was going to get. Agronak retrieved a bottle of blood and one of water, then a couple of rags. He went to kneel by the pallet with his back to the brazier. The fire was still going strong. He felt the heat on the back of what was left of his tunic.

Then he set about trying to get the two of them as clean of bloodstains as he could using as little water as possible. The stains would probably never come out of LoAmai's shirt. _At least it's still in one piece. _

He heard a rustle of fabric behind him. "Are you sure?" No Claws said doubtfully.

"Have I ever hurt you?" Barsabas said. Now, for the first time Agronak had ever heard, he sounded slightly amused.

"No."

"I never will. I _am _your creature, No Claws."

Agronak dabbed at LoAmai's face. Her skin was hot to the touch, as it always seemed to be. He wasn't sure how she'd gotten a spatter of blood as high as her cheekbone, unless she'd _really _been in a hurry getting the arrow out of him. Agronak glanced down at his own chest. It didn't hurt at all, but the old scar from the sword was now a little bigger. LoAmai had shot right through it without even being able to see it. _That _was _a good shot. _

_Did her arm just move?_

"I don't know why everyone thinks Dremoras are so tough," Agronak said quietly. "One little cut on your arm and you just about bleed to death..."

One of the Dremora's hands shot upward and seized hold of the front of Agronak's tunic. Her grip was weaker than usual, but he allowed himself to be pulled downwards until his tusks were within an inch of LoAmai's nose. She opened her eyes. Up close, there were glowing threads strewn through the crimson.

"On a battlefield... There are... Ways to replace it," she said. "Miserable ingrate."

Agronak laughed. "You know, I think you're going to live."

LoAmai said something in her own tongue and let go of his shirt.

"Care to repeat that in Imperial?" Agronak said.

"No," she said. "And it is _Dremora. _Not _Dremoras._" Her voice was clear now, but quiet, as if speaking were an effort.

"Oh, pardon _me." _Agronak rolled his eyes. "I can't imagine what's wrong with me. Perhaps it's something to do with the fact that I was _shot to death _less than an hour ago. Good thinking, by the way."

"Yes," LoAmai said. "It was."

"I don't know that I've met anyone else who'd be brave enough to try that."

The Dremora shrugged one shoulder. "As I said. I could not let him have your life."

"Actually I was speaking of the way you tried to revive me afterwards," Agronak said. "Care for a drink?" He reached over to retrieve the bottle of blood. He was careful to keep his back to No Claws and Barsabas. Judging by the sounds he heard every so often, the process of having her ribs taped was proving about as comfortable as that usually was.

He handed the bottle to LoAmai. She seemed to be avoiding his eyes as she took it. _First time _that's _ever happened. _

"Not a lot of Dremoras – I mean, _Dremora -_ would do that," he said. "Would they."

"I do not intend to discuss it, Orc of Nirn," she saidShe sat up slowly. Agronak's offered hand was met with a glare of withering scorn. He withdrew it. LoAmai sniffed, uncorked the bottle of blood and took a long drink.

Agronak raised his voice, but did not turn. "Finished yet?"

"Yes," No Claws said. Agronak pivoted on his knees to see her seated beside the brazier. _And I don't remember seeing that hunk of wood she's sitting on before, either. _Barsabas stood beside her, brushing dust off his white hands. Like nearly every time Agronak had seen her, No Claws was slightly hunched over, though it was evidently from discomfort rather than cold this time.

"You really were serious about the fire," he said. There was nothing in the bottom of the brazier. _Nothing at all._

"Oh, yes," No Claws said. "As long as we're here, I'll never have to worry about the cold again."

Agronak heard the _clink _of the indestructible bottle being tossed aside. He glanced back at LoAmai, then stood up as she stood up. If she felt unsteady at all, she betrayed no sign of it. Barsabas watched both of them with feral suspicion. If his face was more intelligent than it had previously been, it was no closer to human.

"I guess we could choose a worse place to winter over," Agronak said. "If the Legion does catch up to us, well, there's only the one door."

"A door which has no lock," LoAmai said.

"So we'll find a way to keep it shut," Agronak said. "I'm sure the dead man and I can manage something. If you're willing, of course," he said.

Barsabas looked down at the Argonian. "No Claws?" he said.

"We'll do whatever we can," No Claws said. The zombie nodded.

"It's going to be an interesting winter," said Agronak gro-Malog.

"I sincerely hope not, Orc of Nirn," said LoAmai.

THE END


End file.
